Re: Door knob caps

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

Original poster: "Jason Petrou by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <jasonp-at-btinternet-dot-com>

Hi Tracey,
> OK   forgive the ignorance as I know this is a newbie question for
> sure...I'm attempting the construction of my first coil and the particular
> directions that I'm using call for 3 door knob caps wired in parallel for
a
> total capacitance of 1500 Pico farads.
1500pF (or 0.015uF) is about right, possibly a bit too high but Im sure that
an averaged sized coil would have no problems with that.

>These are 15kv caps. In the
Perfect.

> directions it says not to worry about the capacitance too much. My
question
> is this: How much can   I vary from that capacitance? I have found some
50pf
> caps at 15kv. Can I use these caps? Do I need to add caps to get the
> capacitance up around 400 pf? Or can I run less capacitance say around 200
> pf?
You really need more than about 500pF (0.005uF) to run any type of coil. The
capacitance doesnt really matter (i.e. you can be 500pF out and nothing will
happen) but you do need to get it close to the target capacitance. If you
email; the specs of the coil you hope to build to the list then we can tell
you exactly what capacitance we need.

All the best,
Jason