VTTC snag

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

Original poster: "Sundog by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <sundog-at-timeship-dot-net>

Hi All!
 
Well, it's been an unproductive few days, in the aspect of sparks. 
 
here's the delimma.  I have double and triple checked my setup, but can't find
the reason it's not working.  I should get *something* happening, even if it's
letting out the smoke from something.  Here's the specs
 
1800v MOT, voltage doubled.  it'll easily pull 12A on the 120v line, so there's
plenty of power available
 
secondary is 21" winding of 26ga wire on a 4A green PVC pipe.  unloaded Fres is
~319khz
primary - 37 turns of 14ga THHN on a length of 6" white PVC (6.5" OD), quite a
few taps on it for tuning
grid coil is 12 turns of 22ga hookup wire, about 3/4" above the primary - it
can be moved up or down
tank cap is a 5nf (4.89 measured) MMC, grid C is a 2.5nf MMC, grid R I have a
selection of resistors to try.  They'll smoke in short order, but it should run
for enough to get a result.
 
Running 2v into the variac, I get 16v out of the MOT.  I get roughly 32v at the
top of the tube. Mkay. Doubler and whatnot seems to be working okay, I'm
getting voltage.  
 When i crank the variac to about half-throttle, i get *no* increase in current
to the MOT.  I shut it all down, short the MOT, then crank the variac to half
throttle again.  Draw is about 7A.  Oooookay... Hook the coil back up, and go
to 5nf for the grid C.  Finally I get some current through the MOT, but only
~2A :/    I'm going to try 10nf for the grid cap, but I think I see the problem
already, - not enough turns for the grid coil.  But that's a bit odd, as you
drive the grid current up to shut the tube off..so the tube shold go full on
when I begin applying power, but until I went to a larger crig cap, nothing. 
Hmm...  
 
 I'm going to resume tinkering.  The good thing is that I'm on vacation all
this week, so I got a whole week to mess with it :)  
                                               
Laters                                                Shad