IT Works! Quo Vademus from here?

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

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


Hi Terry & All, 

      Grandson and I fired up the new & improved coil today. It produces 18" 
streamers to a 1-inch brass ball suspended above it from a grounded #10 wire. 
We are not running to full power indoors, as this is a basement workshop with 
overhead gas line. There are a couple of things that I am unsure of about 
where we go next to make improvements. (Part of this a repeat from prior 
posting) 
1) Ed posted a note about 2 weeks ago in which it sounded like he was saying 
that putting a PFC cap across an NST is not good for it, is counterproductive 
to current limiting, and may cause more trouble than it is worth. Perhaps 
this explains what is happening with our coil. Without PFC, the voltage and 
current rise smoothly from 0-60V and 0-8.2Amp respectively. At about 62 V 
input, the main gap starts to fire and the ammeter needle (Weston model 155 
in oak case) does a "random-walk" over the range of 6 to 14 Amp. With the PFC 
correction in the circuit, the voltage and current rise smoothly from 0-60V 
and 0-5.95A. At about 62 V input, the ammeter needle again does the 
random-walk over the range of 6 to 14 Amp. Does this indicate a problem with 
the PFC, NST, or is it just me not understanding the way it operates? 

      The system is configured as follows: 

1)    Power Box: Inlet cable, 15Amp fuse, inlet switch, 15Amp EMI filter 
(backwards), 20Amp/120V Variac, 0-130V AC voltmeter, 0-25 Amp ammeter, power 
outlet switch, outlet cable. Power box components grounded to mains ground. 

2)    PFC Box (Tupperware): 6 parallel 660VAC caps, 89.6uF total, outlet 
cable. 

3)    "Blitzwerfer": 15/60 NST w/safety gap. Each output leg of tranny has a 
200-ohm, 200W wire-wound resistor at ~300 uHy (open porcelain tube 1.675" X 
6.5") as a poor-man's RF choke.- Aspirated spark gap (ala 
www.Altair-dot-org/projects/suckergap/) hooked to shop-vac. A 0.01822uF x 60Kv 
rolled cap, 12T, 0.25"Cu flat spiral primary wound 0.75" c-c, 23" above 
floor, diam 6.375in to 24.375in Tapped -at-7.1T ( 17.10 uH) Secondary: 4.28" x 
820T 23ga starting 25" above floor for 21.16in  (13.96 mH.) Toroid: 4.25x18   
( 13.75 c-c)  -at- 52" above floor. Secondary is grounded via 40" #6 battery 
cable to 5/8"x48" copper-clad rod driven 42" through basement floor as is 
30in diam. strike rail mounted at 25in above floor. No other HV component is 
grounded. Loaded secondary resonates -at- 285 kHz. 

We have run this thru ETesla6.11 and gotten the pictures of Voutput and 
Soutput using Excel surface graph to make a contour plot.Claculated F is 277 
kHz. Unfortunately, I haven't a clue as to what they indicate we should do 
next, or where problems, if any, exist. I would be happy to forward these off 
list to anyone who can tell us what they indicate in terms of improvement. 

Matt D. & Matt D.