Re: All pain no gain

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

Original poster: "Garry F. by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <garryfre-at-pacbell-dot-net>

Hi there.

I too had dissapointing results with my coil at first. Now its all I want it
to be. Huge streamers up to three foot long. I would have been happy with 18
inches!

We will need the specs for your coil to be able to figure out what is
happening.

We would need at least ...

Voltage and Milliamps of your neon sign transformer or whatever you are
using to power your primary.

Dimentions of your secondary. outside diameter, Length of wound area, guage
of wire.

Type of primary whether it is spiral, inverted cone or flat and a guestimate
on the turn to to turn spacing and inside diameter of coil and outside
diameter and distance from the lowest part of secondary if it is a flat
primary.

Type of cap, Voltage of Cap if available and the capacitance.

Type of gap. Static, Rotary sync, rotary assync. How is it built?

Size of your topload.

As for using the wallplug as ground, if you can possibly avoid it, don't use
the wallplug for ground except maybe the Neon Sign Transformer case. The
bottom of your secondary if its a unipole coil should be connected to a good
ground from a rod or rods driven into the ground. If that isn't possible,
use a metal water pipe (Cold side!) . If you are like me you live in an
apartment where the pipes are plastic, there is no place you can put a
grounding rod.

In my case, I use the wallplug but only because there is no other ground
available and my coil is small compared to the average person out there on
the list whose coil throws 5-6 foot sparks. Mine throws close to 30 inch
sparks and three foot streamers. Any bigger than that, and I wouldn't be
running it here at all. So far, nothing has been damaged or shown any signs
of problems from running the coil but all the same I turn off computers. I'm
not saying it is safe to run a coil of any size at your location and I'm not
saying I'm safe running mine off a wallplug. All I am saying is so far,
nothing in my apartment or any neighbors has fried but that may be pure luck
and if there were a place to drive a rod, I'd do it just so I can look the
people here in the eye.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 9:26 PM
Subject: All pain no gain


> Original poster: "Nathan Morris by way of Terry Fritz
<twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <themfam-at-home-dot-com>
>
> I need some help figuring out why my TC is not breaking out.  After months
of
> planning and building I am afraid that this thing is a lemon.  Ground is
ground
> right? Isn't earth ground the same as an RF ground?  Shouldn't I be able
to tie
> the bottom of my secondary to ground via an extension cord and wall
outlet?
> How close to tuned (number of turns) does the primary tap have to be
before I
> will see breakout.  Maybe I was in the wrong neighborhood.  My primary is
23
> turns.  I will add another 2 turns. How often should the safety gap across
the
> cap fire?  I adjusted the gap distance from loud blue light to none at
all.
> This had no effect.
>
> --Nate
>
>
>