Re: help: coil won't "stay on"

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

Original poster: "BunnyKiller by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <bigfoo39-at-telocity-dot-com>

Tesla list wrote:

> Original poster: "Pholp Smiff by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>"
<kawanze-at-hotmail-dot-com>
>
> I built a neat little coil powered by two <mailto:12kv-at-30ma>12kv-at-30ma transco
> transformers, i have all the other components built to those
specifications. I
> just finished constructing a better torroid for it (it may be worth
noting that
> the topload is slightly larger than the old one, and it is closer to the
top of
> the secondary than the old one)and when i go to turn it on i'll get
perhaps two
> large arcs, and then it will just turn off. I've noticed a *click* sort of
> sound from the transformers that occurs just as the coil turns off. Is there
> some sort of safety mechanism inside these that will cause this effect? If i
> just leave off the secondary and topload completely i could pretty much
run it
> indefinately with no problems of that sort. Oh yeah, another thing that's
kinda
> different about my coil is rather than having a ground, i just directly
> connected the primary to secondary, because im lazy.
>
> I also have another problem. Sometimes when my coil is running (Well
before it
> would just SHUT OFF), it would be shooting out 4 foot
> arcs/sparks/streamers/whatever and be nice and loud, then suddenly go
quiet and
> only spit out purple fuzz around the topload. This problem seems to be
> independent of the first, could it perhaps be tuning? or the height from
> topload to base - or base to secondary windings? What's puzzling is how
it will
> be running great and then suddenly give me whimpy output. It almost seems
like
> a wire comes loose or something.
>
>
> Thanks for you help,
> Phillip Smith
> (Baton Rouge, La)
>

Hi Phillip...

I run 4 transco's ( 4-at- 12KV/30mA) on my smaller 8" coil and during the
initial setup mine did the
same as yours.  I finally determined the problem to be in the capacitors.
They would warm up and
then drop in capacitance ( shorting internally too?? ) I changed out caps
to some reconstituted
mica caps and havent had a problem since.

good to see there is another person in Loo-ezy-aahnna doing coiling besides
me :)  ( Im in Kenner)
if you are in the area sometime, come on by and Ill run the BIGPIG Coil for
ya. ( contact me -at-
bigfoo39-at-telocity-dot-com for phone and address)


Scot D