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Re: New Coil/First Run (15 1/4" dia)

Subject:  Re: New Coil/First Run (15 1/4" dia)
  Date:   Tue, 29 Apr 1997 05:11:15 -0400
  From:   Michael Bauer <mbauer-at-execpc-dot-com>
    To:   Tesla List <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>


I glad to hear you finally were able to get sparks.  It sounds like you
have
it pretty well tuned in order for it to work so well at first power. 
You
mentioned that you have both caps in parallel.  Did you need to have
both to
make the primary tune up, or just trying to get as much capacitance in
the
primary a possible?  On another note, do you always run your coils
outside?
I imagine your garage isn't large enough for huge sparks, so outside
makes
sense.  My house and garage are only 20 feet apart with a basketball
hoop
and a fence to also limit the outdoor area.  I have one of those city
lots
with the garage in back and driveway along side the house, so there is a
limit of how big a spark I can throw without hitting something
damaging.   I
also have 3 ham radio antennas in the back yard that really need to be
disconnected.  My coil is nearly done with only main feed wiring and
toroid
to complete.  I have the rotary and primary wiring done, and have had
the
rotary sparking away without the secondary coil installed so I know my
caps
can hold for a while.  I am getting temporarily sidetracked to work on
the
control panel for my school project instead of finishing the coil
itself.
Does your spark discharge affect the camcorder operation, like make
sparkles
in the picture?  Was your wife present for the first powerup.  Was she
impressed?  My wife would be skeptical that I should ever turn the power
on
again.

At 12:11 PM 4/27/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Subject:  New Coil/First Run
>  Date:   Sun, 27 Apr 1997 07:23:56 -0500
>  From:   Chuck Curran <ccurran-at-execpc-dot-com>
>    To:   Tesla List <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
>
>
>Hello All:
>        Last night I was finally able to set up and put power to my
>newest
>coil.  This is the one with the 15 1/4" dia. secondary with a 56" long
>winding of #15 wire (motor magnet wire comes in 1/2 size steps and odd
>numbers too).  The toroid is 10 1/2" x 56" and I attached a breakout
>bump during assembly.  Well, things went O.K. at first.  I did video
>tape it in order to slowly examine things later and that will help.  As
>I ran up the autotransformer I was expecting to hear the spark gap and
>then with a bit more input voltage achieve breakout on the toroid.  As
>soon as I heard the gap fire within a split second 6-8 foot sparks shot
>out of the breakout bump on the toroid.  There was also quite a bit of
>light coming up from beneath the primary where I house the spark gap,
>more than I recall from when I ran just the one .025 CP cap.  Oh, I
>better mention I had my new Plastic Capacitiors .05 and the older .025
>CP cap in parallel.  The light had me watching since it really reflected
>off the bottom of the aluminum foil covered toroid.  Well, within about
>20 seconds I apparently popped the fuse on the circuit for the rotary
>motor and it started to wind down with an interesting display of how
>higher break rates promote better spark! I did use a tach to set the
>rotary at a break rate of 360 bps for this first run. Today I'll be
>checking out the details of the short run and then try again.  I watched
>the video, in some sections frame by frame and I didn't see any clear
>evidence of any "unplanned" arcing.  The light coming up from the vacuum
>and rotary gaps did however sort of mask things abit so it's really way
>too soon to know if the coupling and other items are O.K. or not.  The
>few sparks that did occur were dramatically more intense with this
>bigger coil when compared to my 8" dia secondary coil from last year. 
>The final resonant frequency turned out ot be 65 Khz on this new coil,
>just for information.  I hope that within about one hour today I'll have
>things ready for another test run, even though rain is predicted, I'll
>at least get it ready for today or tomorrow!
>
>Chuck Curran
>Cedarburg, WI
>
>