Punting Coil!

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

Original poster: "S & J Young by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <youngs-at-konnections-dot-net>

List,

Just for "kicks", I rigged up a very small kicking coil exciter for my twin
4 x 23 TC.  I used a 120 volt relay from Radio Shack, wiring the coil and
normally closed contacts in series so as to work like a buzzer.  The relay
contacts were connected to the series connected primary coil and cap.  The
hope was that it would work well enough to make a relatively safe means of
tuning a TC.

It worked about as well as Charlie Brown was able to kick a football with
Lucy holding it.  "Streamer" output was about a sixteenth of an inch to
ground.  It would light a florescent lamp laying across one of the toroids,
but moving the primary tap point did not produce a very sharp bright point.
So not much use for tuning or anything else.

I did this using raw 120 V AC and also about 150 V DC.  Either case was
truely wimpy.  I suppose the power was only a few watts.

My little relay kicking (punting) coil has a 3900 ohm winding of hair thin
wire.  The kicking coil construction plans I have in a 1916 era reprint call
for a coil of 1000 turns of #22 wire wound on a core of soft iron wire about
3 inches long.  This would power an Oudin Resonator which would produce up
to 7 inch sparks.  Has anyone built a beefy kicking coil powered TC?

--Steve