First Memphis Teslathon :-)

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

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <Tesla729-at-cs-dot-com>

Hi all,

This past Saturday, fellow TCML member Kerry Ludwig and his
family came down to Memphis to attend the Dixiefest (hamfest).
We had been talking on the computer and decided to meet up at
the hamfest. After we each picked up a few goodies at the fest 
for a nominal fee, we all headed back to my home for some firing
of my "Medusa" coil system. Kerry also brought me a circa 1945
100 kVP x-ray xfmr and I swapped him a couple of my large HV 
caps for his ~ 200 lb. beauty. We finally figured out how to acti-
vate the HV winding of the xfmr and got some nice self-starting,
thick, 4" to 4 1/2" long power-arc plasma between the HV terms!
I'm sure this voltage is a little high for a Tesla's primary circuit, 
but it should make for one heckuva Jacob's Ladder, though.

Kerry brought his old manual camera and took some shots of the
sparks. We didn't have a tri-pod though, so I don't know if the still
shots are going to come out good or not yet. We, also shot some 
video of the sparks and Kerry's going to put it on a CD where he 
works. So, maybe I can get some pics of my coil on the web in the
not-too-distant future :-)

Anyway, although there was only two real coilers in my shop for that
day, that's one more than I've ever had in my shop at one time before.
And we are less than 130 miles apart, so we should be able to get 
together on a reasonably regular basis. Anyway, we called it the first
Memphis Teslathon :-) and hopefully, there'll be many more to come.

Sparkin in Memphis,
David Rieben