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Second Light
Hi all
This weekend saw the rebirth of my coil two years after blowing my
Sangamo mica transmitting cap. UK coilers may recall the embarrassing
non-operation of my coil at this May's Teslathon in Corby. Well since
then I have decided to go down the MMC route and bought 200 0.047uF caps
in the UK bulk buy (cheers Alan!). I made five strings of 20 caps, with
bleed resistors, to give me a total capacitance of 9.4 nF, my prevoius
cap being 4nF. Bear in mind I am using a 25KV transformer, so I *did*
need 20 in series. Having moved in to a new house I had to make a new RF
ground which I did by hammering through a foot of concrete and bashing
three earth rods into the ground. This is connected to the coil with 3"
brass strap and liberally watered with salt solution.
"Mad" Mike Tucknott came over this weekend and bought his RQ gap that he
nearly destroyed with the Pole Pig and assorted toroids. To cut a long
story short, the coil works fine, although some interesting points
arise: output is reduced considerably from the previous cap where I was
getting 3' discharges. With this cap my primary was tapped out at 23
turns.
Also, we were getting longer sparks from my small (12" x 3") toroid than
mike's 24 x 3 torroid. I know my gap needs upgrading, at the moment I
have 5 in series, 1" brass rods end to end. An RQ gap is the next
project, and I am gradually assembling parts for an RSG when I am brave
enough to tackle magnifiers.
On another note, I got a book from the library last week called
"Electric UFO's" - 'A chilling exposure of electromagnetic pollution
and its effect on the environment and our health'. There's quite a lot
of Tesla related stuff in there and the Corums work on Ball Lightning is
summarised. Worth a read, but there's also a fair bit of mumbo-jumbo
too. At a car-boot sale today i picked up 20 editions of "Wireless
World" from 1942 - 1944. I'm looking forward to working my way through
them.
Anyway if anyone's got any ideas about the reduced output I'd be
interested to hear them.
Happy coiling, and look forward to seeing the UK crew in Cambridge on
the 30th (this time with a working coil ;-) )
Steve Crawshaw
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