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SoCal Teslathon Rocked!

The Teslathon was a LOT of fun!

The following is a quick list of the participants and a little info on
their equipment.
There was a total of 13 coils.

--- Hobbyist  ---

1.  David McNamee
David had a 6" secondary powered by (2) paralleled 12KV, 120ma NSTs.
David made some beautiful flat plate caps in clear plexi containers.
The
plexi workmanship on the caps was incredible!  Very beautiful job.

2.  Brian Basura (2 coils)
Brian ran his PT powered coil with rolled LDPE caps.
He also ran his mini-twin.  This little guy is a real performer.

3.  Ross Overstreet
NST powered 6" coil with a RQ gap and rolled LDPE caps.

4.  Scott Hanson
NST powered 6" coil with a RQ gap and rolled LDPE caps.
We need to have a moment of silence for Scott's blown cap.
He designed the caps for use in series, but had to run it by itself
due to time constraints.  Good sacrifice, Scott!

5.  Mike Church (2 coils)
Mike had 2 coils there.  Didn't record their official size, but it
looked
like a 6" and 4" coil.  These coils produced really hot arcs, and they
should
since Mike was using David Mcnamee's 240ma NST supply!  Mike had an
interesting doorknob airblast spark gap and one of those outstanding
plate caps
with the clear plexi case.

6.  Kevin Ottalini
Kevin presented a beautiful DC coil.  It was driven by a NST running
into a
Cockcroft-Walton multiplier.  The variable speed spark gap produced a
really interesting low break rate display.  (Didn't realize that you had
to travel
from San Jose, thanks for coming down!  It was great to have a DC coil
there. )

8. Dale Hall
Dale brought his Ni-cad battery powered coil with the vacuum relay
sparkgap.

---- Professionals ----

7.  Jeff Parisse,  Franklin Londin, and Nick Ritter from the KVA Crew
http://teslacoil-dot-com/html/equipment.htm
Jeff ran the V500 Tube Coil and the 8J.  It was a really impressive
show!
Seeing the tube coil was a truly unique experience.  It's hard to
explain how
a tube coil looks, but the blow torch analogy isn't too far off.  The
plasma
really appears to flow from the top rather than just dance around like a

pulse-discharge coil.  Guess it's time for me to start looking for tubes
:-)
The 8J also did a great job.

8.  Bill Wysock
http://www.ttr-dot-com
Bill and the 5M magnifier put on a great show.  It was nice to have a
magnifier there,
many of us had never seen one these before.  Bill's PT died and took
part of the
current limiting variac with it.  He did a little rewiring, borrowed
Jeff's pig, and
kept the 10+ ft arcs coming!  Great show, Bill.

9.  Richard Silvera
Richard had the largest diameter secondary.  It did a great job.
The high break rate of Richard's coil makes an interesting sound.
Anyone have Richard's URL?  You guys deserve a picture of this beast!

10.  Austin Richards
http://www.austinrichards-dot-com
Check out Austin's site for pics of the arm blaster and the Electrobot
suit.
Austin puts on a Faraday cage suit and runs around under the big coils
while
they pound him with arcs.  He also holds 2x4s in his hand while they
catch fire.
Thanks Austin!

---- Amusing toys ----
Steve Cole brought some neat toys.  Steve had a quarter that had been
"modified" by
3000J in an explosive flux compression experiment (same as Z-pinch?).
The quarter was
about half of its original diameter, a little thicker, and still
maintained it's features.

Steve also brought some huge Lichtenberg Figures.  I believe that they
were about 12"x12"x1".
If you haven't heard of these before, they are slabs of plexi that have
been put in a linear accelerator.
I was told that the electron beam creates mechanical stresses which
cause an arc pattern to appear in the plexi.
Check out the ads in back issues of the TCBA for some drawings of these
things.

Mike Ames brought a truckload of  7.5mfd, 20kv pulse-discharge caps.  He
was selling them
dirt cheap, and I believe that he managed to offload about half of them.

------------------------

The Telsathon couldn't have been any better.  The conversation was
great, the coils
spectacular, and everyone seemed to have a great time.  I want to thank
everyone
for helping keep the place clean.  Even though there were 70-80 people
there,
there was almost no trash left laying around. Nothing was damaged and no
one was hurt...
well, that's true if you ignore the fact that some fool  (that
Overstreet guy) walked through
Brian's screen door while it was still closed, hehehe

Thanks to all who showed up to enjoy the fun.  Special thanks to the
professionals
(KVA crew, Wysock, Silvera), those who brought coils,  and those who
helped cook and
set up (Bruce Basura, Denis Despins).

I'm sure I missed many details and probably got some things completely
wrong.  Feel
free to make any additions / corrections.  Here are the URLs that I know
about so far:

http://members.aol-dot-com/ARSONIST01/SoCal.htm
http://fp2.hughes-dot-net/brianb/newpage11.htm

Oh yeah, LOST & FOUND
- someone left a Cannon Snappy camera
- my 3D cell mag light went away

Making arcs in Huntington Beach,
--
Ross Overstreet
Huntington Beach, CA
ICQ 20762411