Short report of the first North Texas Tubeathon

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

Original poster: "Bert Pool by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <bertpool-at-ticnet-dot-com>

Haltom City Texas was host to a small contingency of tube coil enthusiests
Saturday.  Ross Overstreet drove up from south Texas and brought a new tube
coil that he has been building and trying to peak out to max power.  Later,
using the same power controller, we also got to see Ross's really great
mid-size disruptive coil run.  He's getting 6 foot sparks from a single neon
transformer driven system.  True, it is a reworked neon tranny, but only in
having some shunts knocked out and flash-over protection installed on the
secondary windings.  Everyone was impressed with Ross's fine workmanship on
his coils.  And again I have to say we very impressed with the carefully
measured 6 foot sparks from the single neon transformer; the best such
performer I've personally witnessed.

The highlight of the day was when Ross's power controller had some
unexpected flashes inside.  He unscrewed the top cover and lifted it out and
balanced it on the side of the housing.  He wanted to see exactly what
component was failing inside.  He flipped the breaker on, and a violent
flash and ball of fire lept out of one of the power indicator lamp sockets.
I have never seen a neon indicator lamp fail in such a catastrophic manner.
Unfortunately, Ross had one hand over the lamp when it blew up.  The
fireball blackened his entire hand and blistered one finger and left his
hand smoking.  But I have to say that Ross was a truely staunch coiler, and
did NOT drop the flaming lid back down into the metal case:  apparently some
gutsy coilers will only let go when BOTH hands are on fire!

Washing the soot off his hand revealed only a minor injury.  The flash and
smoke were impressive, but fortunately not terribly injurious.  Max Hempel
caught the whole thing on video tape, and maybe we can get it AVI'd on a web
page.

Some quarters were shrunk and handed out to some young first-time visitors
who might one day become coilers themselves.  It was good to hear one of
them say "Hey, science is cool!"  Phil's tube coil got a good workout this
time.  I'm always amazed to see this smoking, melting coil, held together
with alligator clips and bubble gum, run so well.  And unlike some past
experiences with tube coils, we didn't kill any digital cameras this time.

The Wart Hog kicked out its normal 12+ foot sparks, but sadly had some lower
windings fail, and the coil will soon be sporting some more epoxy warts from
the winding repairs.
Max's 4 inch disruptive coil was running quite well, even though the small
static gaps ran cherry red hot.

Finally, I'd like to thank Phil Rembold and his wife Venice for being such
gracious hosts.

Bert Pool