Re: Ed Wingate Tesla Coil Movie

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

Original poster: "Edward Wingate by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <ewing7-at-rochester.rr-dot-com>


 > Firstly, great coil. I love your work - it has a very cool "old
 > school" feel to it. It's a nice example of how a short, stubby coil
 > with a small tank cap and high breakrate can perform. Anyways, I was
 > wondering if the breakout point causes any obvious decrease in
 > performance (spark intensity, length, etc). Richard Hull used to go
 > on about how bad breakout points were, and suggested the use of small
 > foil bumps. These have a low ROC, and can therefore still withold a
 > high voltage before breakout, but still upset the field enough to
 > premote breakout from that point. Just curious.
 >
 > BTW, Your maggie and twin systems must be getting pretty old. I
 > remember seeing a video of a teslathon at your place in the early 90s
 > that had both those coils. Very Impressive to say the least. Don't
 > know exactly how I got hold of that video in Australia. Hopefully one
 > day I can go to the US and see them in person. The video also had a
 > large VTTC and wimshurst machine as I remember, I think.
 >
 > Cheers,
 >
 > Greg.

Thanks Greg,

I am "old school" and I'm getting a little old too! :^)

The breakout point isn't really a point, but is a copper strip with
just enough curve to slightly disrupt the field around the toroid to
cause the sparks to stay concentrated at that point. Richard Hull did
emphatically discourage the use of points and I agree that sharp
points do tend to cause corona which drains off the charge prematurely
and degrade performance. Richard also DID use small copper or foil
strips on later versions of his magnifiers as directors to force the
sparks to go where he wanted them to go to get maximum spark lengths
with limited space. I have noticed no difference in the performance of
any of my coils with the small copper strip bumps as compared to
operation without them.

Actually, the classic 18" coil on Terry Blake's video is the oldest
coil I have. It is #18 THHN MTW wound on Sonotube. I built and
operated that same secondary with a single 30" X 7" toroid in the
basement of my house around 1990 with a 5KVA pole transformer. It was
producing 7 footers in a basement with an 8 foot ceiling and was
striking the fuel oil tank and water heater and occasionally shooting
sparks up through the floor in the living room! I DO NOT recommend or
condone this method of operation! It was at that time that I decided
that it might be better to build a dedicated high voltage lab in the
back yard than to risk burning the house down. If my insurance agent
had only known! I have since added a new primary/base and rotary gap
along with the huge topload and the coil performs better than it ever
has. Yes, boys and girls, Sonotube works just fine. Sure, it's lossy,
but if you just pump in a little more power, who's going to notice?
:^)

Greg, you are correct, the twin system was built in the early 90s a
short time after the lab was completed.

The first magnifier version was built mid 90s and has undergone
upgrades and improvements many times since that time. The first driver
coil was 36" Sonotube and was replaced with a 32" polyethylene driver
and all new primary/base design in the late 90s. I even fired a twin
magnifier system using both of those drivers with limited success
around that same time. Unfortunately, time constraints due to
Teslathon hosting, work and other high voltage/high energy projects
have kept me from any intensive magnifier work in the last two or
three years.

Videos and photos of my lab seem to have found their way to every
corner of the globe. I'm honored that folks like my work.

You are welcome to visit my lab any time you like. I would be great to
have you! As you and all coilers well know, it's always more fun to
wail on the equipment when you are sharing the experience with others
who appreciate Tesla coils as much as you do.

I hope you are having a good springtime down there as we approach
winter up here.

Best Regards,

Ed Wingate RATCB