Tube application thought

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

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

	Hi All!

With great anticipation of building a tube coil, and with most of my HV 
toys not in my garage (sorry Dave!), i was settled with tinkering with my 
IGN coil and standard 555&2n3055 driver.  About half an hour into making 
lights into plasma globes, frying a few ants that wandered across my 
workbench, the driver died.  The 3055 was toast, and the 555 didn't smell 
too good either.  Disgusted with yet another driver set frying, i chunked 
it in the bin (saved the important stuff), and started digging through my 
junkbox for more parts.  I unearthed my old signal generator (30-40 years 
old?), my old tube tester (circa 1950's), and a box of old replacement 
tubes for my long-gone guitar amp.  Whooboy, the perceptive can see where 
this is going.

So I'm going to build another 555 based driver, only I'll rig the pulsed 
output of the driver to supply negative voltage to a ~50w triode's grid. 
 I'm a bit limited in my selection of tubes at the moment (didn't make it 
to the flea market), but I know 50watts at several khz will give you one 
nasty-smelly RF burn. The tube I plan to use may change if I can come 
across a better suited tube.  Anywho!  I'm just gettin' started playing 
with tubes, so this may or may not work.  Just getting the tube to 
oscillate properly will be an achievement for me.
 Will it work???  i haven't the slightest!
   But that's why we "try it and see."  If it works like I hope, I'll save 
myself the frustration of blowing more 555 driver circuits (I should etch 
the boards en-masse).  But I think it'd be a bit of rustic charm to see a 
little glowing tube powering a plasma globe.  :)



Thoughts, comments, etc welcome!
													Shad