Re: new little coil

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

Original poster: "Terry Fritz" <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>

Hi Dave,

People get 30 plus inch arcs from 12/30 NSTs so you have room for
improvement.  Hopefully, easy stuff :-))

Three things come right to mind.

You arcs look like it might not be in tune.  The primary and secondary need
to be tuned to the same frequency.  I do not know how much you have done in
this area.  Maybe you have done calculations or used the computer programs
to find the frequencies and you know what they are.  Or you just put the
part together from scratch and it worked fairly well anyway :-))  Working
on the tuning may give you far greater arc for free.  A larger top terminal
like a dryer duct toroid will really help too and it will work once the
tuning is figured out.

The spark gap is probably not the best and wasting a lot of power.  For
now, just keep it clean since a better one is "work" and other things will
help much more.

The wine bottle caps are probably real ineffiecient.  After the tuning
thing, try to get an MMC going.  that might double the arc length.

So tuning, MMC, and then a better gap are my suggestions.

Cheers,

	Terry


At 12:24 PM 2/13/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>In a message dated 2/13/02 9:57:26 AM Eastern Standard Time, tesla-at-pupman-dot-com 
>writes:
>
><< Hello everyone....
> 
> This is my first posting here, but I have been reading this list for a few
> months now.
> 
> I recently finished building a new coil, and took a couple of pics of my
> makeshift setup to share with everyone! heres the link: 
> 
> http://www.85merk-dot-com/members/daves/tssm.jpg
> 
> Its powered by a 12/30 NST, a single static gap, and three wine bottle
> capacitors.
> the secondary is 1.5" x 12" tall, the primary is 15 turns of 12 gauge solid
> wire.
> 
> so far my sparks have been a healthy 6-7".
> 
> It is weird though, this little coil only seem to run good with that tiny
> solid cast iron ball on top (or nothing at all). As soon as I add a bigger
> topload (copper toilet bowl float) my sparks almost completely vanish, even
> with much tuning of the cap, gap, and primary..???
> 
> Any input would be great!! (besides my obvious saftey issues, as they have
> mostly been taken care of with the addition of neon sign wire)
> 
> thanks, dave schultheis
>