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Re: FIRST LIGHT FINALLY!

Hi,

congrats to get it working!
> Can anyone help me increase the spark output?Here are the specs so 
> far------3by15inch secondary wound on a cardboard mailing tube wound with 
> 24awg wire.
One not so urgent thing: if you haven't done it already, try drying the
secondary in a warm dry room for a couple of hours, and when it is really
dry then seal it with polyurethane from the inside, too.
Later try also if raising or lowering the secondary gives better effect.

> the capacitor is 3 1liter wine 
> bottle salts.
Make first a MMC cap from bought small capacitors, or build an other cap.
Maybe with plastic bags, transparency sheets, or so (in the style of MMC).
A real MMC is better, and costs you less (effort & $) in the end.

> the spark gap is only two bolts screwed in a pvc 
> pipe.(need a new kind as it now is melted!)
Heh! No wonder the pvc melts, the SG gets pretty hot... A simple fan blown
cylindrical copper pipes gap (RQ) would be better. You could get copper
pipes from a metal scrap yard, close to free. Maybe they have fans (car,
industrial, electr. equipment) too. Also a static gap with many copper
pipe pieces in series and a very small gap between them, without fan,
could work well for starters.

> The toplaod is a small ,very small 
> homemade one made from 2 plastic throwaway bowls.
Maybe a bit larger wouldn't hurt. Some sort of sphere could be nice
t.ex., football or large medicine ball covered with alu foil if not
some other sphere. Or, once being at this, a large balloon covered with
"Papp-mache'" (soaked paper and tapestry glue - "Kleister" in german -,
kindergarden style) and then alu foil. Or a toroid, which is harder to
make, though. Or just place a flat metal plate on the secondary, like one
of these oven..errmm..boards(?). 

For a chance to get longer streamers without changes try taking a long
piece of thick wire with sharp ends, or a metallic ruler, and put it on
the topload. The farther away the ends stick from the topload, the better.

If you place the sharp end of the wire on a dielectric, and wrap alu foil
around the farther end of the dielectric and ground it, you could also get
longer streamers/sparks.

--
*************************************************
 Jan Florian Wagner
 http://www.hut.fi/~jwagner