Re: Odd effect noticed

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

Original poster: "Ryan Phillips by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <xanth-at-voyager-dot-net>

I've noticed this effect also.  I have a small 1" coil run off a 5/30 NST.
With a normal earth ground I cannot get any breakout (although it will light
a light bulb 8 ft away and screw up every piece of test equipment within 30
ft) so I built a ground around it.  This consists of 24" diameter circle of
hardware cloth around the coil with the top being the same and the bottom
being copper sheet.  It works great for demos because of it physical size
and no need for a earth ground.  The 8" sparks can easily be drawn to a
small 10w neon bulb held in your hand.

When the coil is shut off however, the bulb doesn't.  It will glow in your
hand for between 5 and 10 minutes.  It looks totally lit at first but after
a minute you can see it's pulsing very fast.  It continues to slow down and
become dimmer until the pulses are very dim and about once every five
seconds.  When I touch one end of the bulb to the coils ground, the
intensity greatly increases.  I thought maybe I was holding a charge so my
thinking was if I touched ground, I would be discharged and the pulsing
would stop.  This didn't happed, there was no change in the bulb.

I can walk anywhere with the neon bulb and it continues to glow for a few
minutes.  Put it down...it stops, pick it back up...it starts again.  Any
ideas are greatly appreciated!

Ryan Phillips

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2001 10:58 PM
Subject: Odd effect noticed


> Original poster: "J. B. Weazle McCreath by way of Terry Fritz
<twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <weazle-at-hurontel.on.ca>
>
>
> Hello coilers,
>
> I had a friend drop by to see my coil earlier tonite and he had a
> double helix neon tube with him that I placed on top of the toroid
> to see what would happen when I fired the coil.
>
> As expected, the tube lit up quite brightly and a terrific pair of
> streamers emitted from the electrodes at the ends of the tube, a
> rather spectacular light show!  Upon shutting down, we both noticed
> that the bulb continued to glow, albeit at a much reduced brightness,
> for about ten or more seconds.  During that time, the bulb actually
> pulsed in brightness with a rate of about one pulse per second.
>
> The air in my shop was quite dry and cool at the time, and I thought
> that this pulsing might be the result of a residual charge on the
> toroid and secondary bleeding off, but why at such a low rate?
> Any ideas from you guru's as to what was going on there?
>
>
> 73, Weazle, VE3EAR/VE3WZL
>
> Listening: 147.030+ and 442.075+
> E-mail:    weazle-at-hurontel.on.ca
>            or ve3ear-at-rac.ca
> Web site:  www.hurontel.on.ca/~weazle
>
>
>
>