Re: first coil

To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Re: first coil
From: Bert Hickman <bert.hickman-at-aquila-dot-com> (by way of Terry Fritz <twf-at-verinet-dot-com>)
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 11:59:13 -0700
Approved: twf-at-verinet-dot-com

Tesla List wrote:
> 
> Original Poster: "mike.shaw" <mike.shaw-at-the-spa-dot-com>
> 
>    Hello,
> 
> I am in the process of building my first coil with the following specs:
> 
> secondary: 4 inch pvc with 900 turns of 24 awg wire.
> primary: 15 turns of 3/8 copper tubing
> input xfmr: 12 kv 30 ma
> 
> I plan on starting with salt water caps and would like advice on the
> best configuration to achieve capacitance close to 066 mfd.  I am also
> not quite sure how big to make the torrid for my top load.  Any advice
> would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Mike

Mike,

You want a capacitor of 0.0066 uF (6600 pF) not 0.066 uF. Assuming you
use beer bottles (650-800 pF/bottle), this would be about 8 or 9 beer
bottles worth of saltwater caps, and 4X this if you elect to make a
series-parallel configuration to reduce voltage stress on the bottles.
I'd recommend using a 4" x 15" toroid made from two small piepans and a
piece of 4" aluminum flexduct. This should result in a system that's in
tune at around 250-300 kHz. 

Safe coilin' to you!

-- Bert --