First light - with MMC

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

Original poster: "Shaun Epp by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <scepp-at-mts-dot-net>


Well on the easter weekend I fired up my coil with the new MMC bank I built.
After some tuning, lots of tuning, I managed to get ~4 foot growing
streamers, neat :-)    I can draw ~2 1/2 foot arcs to a grounded discharge
arc stick and this was all done using a metal screen counterpoise and the
house ground.  I was thrilled so see it work so well.

 My only conplaint is that I can only see the sparks in the dark, they are
purple blue in colour and white when I draw sparks to a grounded arc rod.
What can I do to make them more visible?

My coil is a 4.25" by 22" secondary with a flat spiral primary, and two
section spark gap, and a 12Kv -at- 60mA NST for the power source.  The
capacitors works out the LTR   at 0.0215uF.  I also bought a 12" * 3"
torroid  and I'm using a Terry filter.   All connection cables have soldered
connectors and are of heavy gauge in the tank, #8 car audio power cable, and
I use 14 gauge 35 Kv wire for the rest.

Thanks everyone for answering my questions,  now time experiment and make in
better.

Shaun Epp