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Who IS this New Guy?
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Just got a <welcome to the club> e-mail from Bert Hickman (Thanks, Bert!),
and he wanted to know more about me. I thought that it might be helpful if
I told ALL the Tesla List members something about myself, as that is the
quickest way for you and I to begin to interact and share our interests and
knowledge and expertise.
My name is Fr. Thomas McGahee. I am a Catholic Priest, 50 years old, and
have been teaching Electronics for about 30 years. The last 20 years I have
been teaching Electronics here in Paterson, New Jersey. I teach Sophomores,
Juniors and Seniors courses in Electronics that take them all the way from
Ohm's Law to Microprocessors.
I have always been the kind of person that loves science, especially weird
things like Lasers and Tesla Coils and X-ray machines. I devour books the
way some people devour chocolate candy. I can't get enough of knowledge.
But I don't just read about the things that interest me. I DO the things
that interest me. I am a very hands-on kind of guy, at my happiest when I
am up to my eyeballs in projects.
As regards Tesla Coils, I have been hanging around them since I was ten,
and building them since I was twelve. My smallest coil was a Two Incher
that could throw 4 inch sparks. It was oil-immersed and used as an ozone
generator. My biggest to date is a four foot high unit that has thrown
three foot sparks, though not for long. When my students assembled it
someone goofed and forgot what I had told them about initially only using
one side of the transformer. Elated over the fact that we were getting more
that a foot long spark using only ONE side of the transformer, one of my
budding geniuses (unbeknownst to ME), disconnected the wire that wend to
the case ground and connected up BOTH sides of the transformer. The next
time we turned it on I wondered why I had to re-tune it, but I was jumping
with joy when I moved the primary tap and the sucker burst into glorious
resonance. Oh, it was beautiful!!! Fantastic 3 foot tendrils of light
reached out and caressed the air. But after only about 30 seconds, it blew
one side of the transformer. And it was such a nice transformer, too! A big
humongous 15KV 120ma creature that I had searched far and wide to find.
I have built roughly fifty Tesla coils altogether. Some of them were built
when I didn't really understand the principles involved. But as my
knowledge has increased, so has the size of my secondary sparks. I have
gone from using pieces of 1/4 bolt material for my nicely pointed spark
gaps (yuck) to constructing some fairly decent rotary spark gaps.
I have gone from just having a little piece of bare wire sticking off of
the top of my coils and having corona so weak you had to turn the light off
to see the dinky little brush discharge to having SHEETS of flame bursting
into the air from the side of a homemade toroid. Homemade toroids because I
don't have the funds to purchase anything too neat and shiny. But it is
surprising how well a homemade toroid (or a homemade Anything Else for that
matter),can perform. Maybe I could write up something about how they can be
constructed from readily available materials. Mine are by no means perfect,
but even an imperfect toroid is an improvement over no toroid at all. I
have discovered all my life that I can very often make do with "something
else". In fact, that is my favorite saying: "If all else fails, try
something else".
I have been a dumpster diver, a scrounger of discarded items, one of those
people that goes to the junk yard To Shop. Many of my coil forms, for
instance were scrounged from local carpet shops. Cost: Zippo. The big coil
I built... the coil form for THAT baby was a discarded carboard type BARREL
about four feet high and two feet in diameter that had once contained dry
laundry detergent. I liberated it before it could become just another
industrial garbage can. I had to modify it by sawing through the metal
bands so there would not be a shorted turn at either end. Would it be
better without the metal bands? Yes, but I have many things to do with my
time, and since the coil is already wound, I don't really feel like
stripping it down and starting over from scratch. Maybe my NEXT coil will
be More Elegant (but I doubt it!)
What do I DO with my coils? Well, I have built two particle accelerators.
Not really GOOD particle accelerators, mind you, but working well enough to
produce a zoo of subatomic stuff that kept our homemade particle detector
very busy. I have built numerous X-ray machines ranging from sub-60KV units
that were used to x-ray the delicate innards of flowers up to 250KV units
that required extensive lead shielding. I even built some of my own X-ray
tubes, using my homemade vacuum pumps built from discarded refrigerator
compressors, and my homemade diffusion pump that even amazed ME when it
worked the first time.
But mostly I just love to fire up a Tesla coil and enjoy it for the sheer
experience of it. Ah, the smell of ozone, the thunder of the spark gap, the
exhilaration of watching a big blue-white-purple finger of light burst into
a thick coiling snake of a lightning bolt. And to know that I built that
myself. Satisfying stuff!
I have built Tesla coils, Oudin coils, and non-resonance type high voltage
devices. I have used Helix, Spirals, and Saucer Spirals for primaries. I
have built single layer coils and multilayer coils (you keep these suckers
really small and well-insulated in oil or beeswax). I have made coils that
used what is called a Kick Coil instead of a transformer to charge the
capacitors. I am probably one of the few people out there who have actually
built their own 15KV 2KW transformers (never again!).
As an electronics teacher I have applied my knowledge of electronics to my
hobby of building Tesla coils. I have learned as much from my mistakes over
the years as I have from my successes. I hope that I can learn from many of
you, and perhaps share some of my knowledge with each of you as well.
I have limited this introduction to those aspects of myself that sort of
relate to the focus of this group, which is Tesla coils. My interests are
wide-ranging, however, and if I can be of help to anyone in ANY area,
please feel free to e-mail me. If it is not directly related to Tesla
coils, you might want to e-mail me directly so that we don't clog up the
Tesla List with stuff that is off the topic.
If all else fails, try something else!
Fr. Thomas McGahee