fox's second second

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Matt Skidmore by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <fox-at-woozle-dot-org>

my second coil finally gave some spark on the second try.
my first coil was a paper toilet tube and it attracted a bunch of people
from my dorm to watch.
this second coil is using a 4.5 inch diameter PVC pipe, 4 15,000 volt .02
MFD capacitors (in series) and a 15,000 30 ma transformer with 7 spark
gaps. im also using some rather large stainless steel bowls as a top load.

the first time i fired this coil up, i got NOTHING! needless to say i was
using 4 brown root beer salt water capacitors. the article about colored
capacitors came out shortly after i had made these, but i didnt have
anything better at the time. dont use colored bottles, or bottles at all
unless you can avoid them. but hey bottles work on a budget ;)

the new capacitor bank (specs mentioned above) have 10 10 MOhm resistors
accross each cap. Much thanks to terry for donating these resistors to me.
The local electronic shows wanted arms and legs for them. using 3 in
series i get 0.0066 MFD and using all 4 i get 0.005 MFD. I built these
using Perf board i got from radio shack. The perf board has a small ring
of copper around each hole. I found this to be helpful while soldering,
but as soon as my coil was power it arched accross each copper ring until
they had all burn off in the direction of the arcing. after that i had no
more arcing :P

the stainless steel topload seems to big too big for my coil. at least
until i get the output of my coil up. using nothing (just the top bolt) or
a tin can i was getting arcs about 8-12 inches long NOT to a grounded
source. for some reason the arcs seem to be the biggest for a few seconds
after turning on the coil and the spark gap is loud. then it goes to a
simmer, and few seconds later the arcs and the gap will once again grow. i
havent been able to nail down what is causing this. im also getting some
heavy sparks/corona off the last few windings of my coil. the last
windings travel an inch up the pvc and then onto the pvc cap where they
spiral to the center of the cap and attach to a brass bolt.

lastly, the primary has 13 turns of 1/4th copper tubing spaced 1/2 inch.
for this second run i had the largest sparks on the 13th winding so it
looks like i will need more turns. the first turn on the primary is 6
inches in diameter. and the first windings on the secondary begin about 1
inch above the primary.

the protection circuit is a peice of junk. its using 2 2 ohm ceramic
resistors on each leg. i dought this is helping to protect the NST but i
dont know what else i can do on a budget.

the park gap is a 9 inch long 4 inch diamet PVC pipe with 7 electrodes
inside it. i can remember what i have them spaced to right now bug
suggestions would be welcome.

sorry for a slightly disconjointed message. id like to get comments about
the way my coil "pulses" and any other ways i might improve it. for now my
main thing is adding more primary turns. also i need to find information
on coupling because i dont know anything about it.

also i'll have some pictures of my coil up soo. no arc pictures because
you cant see them in the day light. so all my pictures are daytime
pictures of the peices. ill repost when i get them up. thanks for all the
information this list has provided!

-fox