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Reddy Kilovolt-"It's Alive!"
A report on my latest, and most serious TC to date, dubbed "Reddy
Kilovolt #1, or RKV-1, a medium sized coil that I'm in the process of
testing / tweaking on. Still in the 'breadboard' stage now, I plan to
build it into a nice cabnet once I feel I've achieved max performance.
So far, here's data on specs, construction, and performance: Power
supply-Three 15/60 NSTs / Spark gap-Static single gap with vacuum
airflow quenching (ala Gary Lau) set at .375" / Capacitance-Three series
wired .08 uFat 100 kV Maxwell pulse caps for .0267 uF at 300 kV /
Primary coil-Flat spiral, 1/2" O.D. copper tubing with about 3/8"
spacing (I say 'about' because it hasn't been put onto a coilform yet),
12 turns, tapped at 11 & 1/2 turns. / Secondary-Coilform, 8.2" by 36"
thinwall PVC with 33.6" winding length with 950 turns of #20 AWG magnet
wire, 3 coats polyurethane inside and out before winding, and 7 more on
top of windings. Three interior 1/4" acrylic baffels epoxied in place.
/ Toroid(s)-Everything I got...and still not enough! A couple of 4" x
16"s, a 3" x 21", and a 3" x 12", and I still get multiple breakouts. At
about 90 to 100 volts input, from 6 to 8 air streamers appear, ranging
from 2 to 4 feet each in length, occasionaly striking metal objects 4
1/2 feet away. When voltage is increased to 120, sparks are fewer, but
much longer, 5 to 6 feet max. I've seen arcs emerge on opposite sides of
the toroid and strike grounded objects 4+ feet in each direction
simultaneously. Air streamers are violet-white and strikes are bright
white and very noisey. I think a much larger topload and a few more
turns on the primary are in order to get those looong single sparks. And
now a question or three??? Does a secondary resonator as described above
have an optimum (most efficiant) operating power (kVA input), or does
efficency (meaning max spark length per watt) increase with input power
? Any ideas as to how many kVA input this secondary could handle ? I
also have a 5, 7.5, and 12.5 kVA transformers. Also, would a sync RSG
give any better performance than a TCBOR style gap or Gary Lau's vacuum
gap on NSTs ?........Many thanks to everyone on the list who has posted
such great information. And a special thanks to Chip and Terry who have
made this great mailing list possible !!! So, what's after "Reddy
Kilovolt"? Maybe "Reddy Megavolt"?..................Coiler howdys from
Texas>>>> Tony Greer (who "LOVES the smell of ozone in the morning")