Re: First (successful) Light!!!

["Barton B. Anderson" <tesla123-at-xxxxxxxxxxx> (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-xxxxxxxxxx>)]

Hi Andrew,

Looking at John Freau's NST formula, at 120V applied, the sparklength should be
around 36". This is a good ballpark figure. Depending on losses, you'll
probably
end up somewhere between 30" and 42". It sounds like your were getting pretty
decent lengths for a 30mA NST, so further improvements will be found in the
tuning
and in finding any areas where losses can be reduced (sparkgap, primary, etc.).

Great job,

Bart

Tesla list wrote:

> Original poster: "Andrew W" <fateagk-at-home-dot-com>
>
> Well, I am so excited. I was finally successful. I got 24" to 30" streamers.
> Its just recently that I set out to rewire and improve my setup and try and
> make it work. I switched from a helix spiral of 12ga wire to a flat spiral of
> 1/4" refrigeration tubing to stop the primary/secondary flashover. I switched
> to an MMC capacitor of 40 of those GE 3000v .1uF caps from Hosfelt. I
> drastically improved my wiring from 16ga to 8ga. I also improved my grounding
> methods. I finally got some results.
>
> I made it a point to spend time putting together this coil rather than just
> throwing it together like my past attempts. Everything is bolted/strapped
down
> to ensure no need to rewire for transporting. This means less chance of me
> messing things up. I have spent almost a months doing this. My time is rather
> limited at times. I am a parent and a full time engineering student at
USF. My
> past few experiences have been plagued with problems like blown capacitors,
> primary/secondary flashover, "undetermined" shorts to ground, and just bad
> design on my part.
>
> For any one who cares, my specs are:
> -15kv/30mA NST
> -.01 60,000V MMC
> -Richard Quick spark gap, 14 electrodes (only 9 used), 105 cfm box fan
quinched
> -14 turn primary, 1/4" copper tubing, tapped at 9 1/2 turns
> -4" secondary, 24ga, wound 21"
> -14" dia. toroid, 3" Al dryer duct, smoothened and covered in Al tape
>
> Well, now I am going to try and tune my coil to get maximum performance
out of
> it. What spark length should I expect if properly tuned? I want to thank
> everyone on the list for helping, over the past year I have learned so much
> from you all.
>
> Thanks,
> Andrew
>
>
>
>
>