Re: First Light

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

Original poster: "brian by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <ka1bbg1-at-mcttelecom-dot-com>

hi, 24 inch spark is GREAT. I'm stuck at 14 inches for the moment. the only
suggestion i have is document changes, then you can backtrack if something
is not better. Good luck...brian
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2001 9:50 PM
Subject: First Light


> Original poster: "Kelly & Phillipa Williams by way of Terry Fritz
<twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <kellyw-at-ihug.co.nz>
>
> Hi All,
>
> On the 8th Feb we had the "First Light" of our 9" coil. Specifications
are:
>
> Power supply: 15kV 120mA NST farm with 1nF filter caps and 3300 ohm
> resistors on each leg.
> Capacitor: 40nF MMC using Terry's Panasonic caps
> Primary coil: 21 turn 254 uH total  flat spiral coil
> Secondary Coil : 9" dia. by 45" wound with 24AWG for 2000 or so turns
> Toroid: 25" center-to-center dia. and 9" tube dia.
>
> We suspended a grounded wire about 5" away from the toroid with no
breakout
> bump, and having no variac, we just threw full power to the NST's. We
> immediately got a LOUD buzzing from the spark gap, and brilliant white
arcs
> to the grounded wire! :-)))))))))
> We then moved the grounded wire out slowly, and the maximum arc length was
> 24 inches!!
>
> We then removed the grounded wire, and we could get 5-6 thin purple
> streamers about 6-7 inches long from all round the toroid (no breakout
> bump). They were very small and thin, but the toroid is very scrappy (foil
> pasted onto a large tractor inner tube).
>
> Our system should be capable of 60" - 80" arcs eventually, and there are
> thousands of things to improve (esp. the coupling - the bottom of the
> secondary coil was more than 4 inches above the primary coil as we were
> scared of secondary flashovers.)
>
> Does anyone know of a method of calculating or measuring when your
coupling
> is optimum aside of lowering the secondary until flashovers appear?
> This is our first coil, so we would like as much advice as possible.
>
> Thanks for all the help everyone has already given us,
>
> Alan Williams and Daniel Mullholland
>
>
>
>
>