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Re: Colorado Notes and laser caps

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> From: Tesla List <tesla-at-poodle.pupman-dot-com>
> To: Tesla-list-subscribers-at-poodle.pupman-dot-com
> Subject: Re: Colorado Notes and laser caps
> Date: Wednesday, February 12, 1997 1:26 AM
-Big Snip- 
> Inside a big metal box was a bunch of coils
> and capacitors. When I asked the guy what all that was about, he
explained
> to me that it was a coil-capacitor Marx multiplier used to step up their
> couple of KV main transformer voltage up to 30KV. I should mention that
> another thing that made this Tesla coil somewhat unconventional was the
> fact that the resonating capacitor was connected directly in parallel
with
> the primary of the Tesla coil.  The Marx multiplier would dump a nice big
> bunch of energy into the L/C primary circuit, and then the primary would
> happily ring away until it was hit again by the next dump of energy. Note
> that this strange Tesla coil was a pulse-driven design with no topload
> other than a flat copper plate on the top..

*** led to the following question:
> 
> Subscriber: Benson_Barry%PAX5-at-mr.nawcad.navy.mil Tue Feb 11 23:12:48 1997
> Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 16:51:00 -0500 (EST)
> From: Benson_Barry%PAX5-at-mr.nawcad.navy.mil
> To: tesla-at-poodle.pupman-dot-com
> Subject: Re: Colorado Notes and laser caps
> 
> 
> TESLA COIL, PULSED, QUESTION
> Hi,
> Could you describe how often the coil fired and
> the nature and appearance of the resulting
> streamers?
> Barry

Barry,
I was only 16 at the time (1964) and I did not make a mental note of the
repetition rate. However, I remember the sound it made, sort of a fast
rat-a-tat-tat from a machine gun. I guess it was greater than 20 and less
than 40 pulses per second. Again, that is only a guess based on the sound.
The sparks occurred rapidly enough that they appeared to be somewhat
continuous. I guess that the ionization caused by one spark initiated the
next set along the same course.
The sparks themselves were magnificent! Long, vibrating arms of
white/purple arc that branched out into thousands of jagged side arcs that
gave the main arc a very ragged and jagged appearance. This was the first
really BIG Tesla coil that I had ever encountered, and it was an awesome
experience!! They put on two shows each evening for three evenings, and I
attended *all* of them!