Re: I give up!! I regret building my tesla coil!

[Esondrmn-at-aol-dot-com (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>)]

In a message dated 8/21/00 8:18:10 PM Pacific Daylight Time, tesla-at-pupman-dot-com 
writes:

<< 
 WOW, nobody gives up with out a fight. when i was 14 yrs old an
 electrician helped me make a tccoil and its output was close to 3 feet
 without a toroid! boy i wished i had the exact plans NOW! we experienced
 some type of flashover,the glass plate cap went boom and so did the water
 heater element,and most of the telephones on the street! well it's 36 years
 later and i'm coiling again but i know it will be a while before i see a
 3footer!!! document-document-document. It makes it real easy to back up when
 you hit a bad setup. otherwise you continue to fumble continuously and get
 mad quick. I've been reading the mail and there are some of the best tc
 tech's right here with all sorts of wisdom free and willing. I will try to
 answer any scrounge questions you have from my email  ka1bbg1-at-mcttelecom-dot-com
 brian......
  >>

I agree with the documentation comment.  I have kept a notebook since I first 
started designing Tesla coils.  The first several pages contain mostly 
calculations and design ideas.  Once the coils are finished, I record the 
calculated and measured values for the primary, secondary and capacitor.  
Then, each firing of the coil is recorded and results noted.  I have gone 
back to my notes innumerable times to see what happened with a particular 
set-up or test.

While I, like most of us, have spent a good deal of money on this hobby, it 
pays big dividends to spend several weeks going through the calculations and 
design on paper before you actually start building anything.  I am surprised 
by the number of questions that I have seen on this list by folks that are 
trying to get a coil to run and the components, values, etc. are not even 
close to being in the ballpark.  Other than our normal desire to keep scaling 
things up in power and searching for longer sparks, poor designs are where 
most money is spent.  It will generally cost less to do it right the first 
time than to redo the project several times to solve problems.

The morale of the story here is to spend the time on the front end, the math 
and the design on paper and save money and frustration later.

Ed Sonderman