Bart's flat coil update

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Original poster: "Barton B. Anderson by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <tesla123-at-pacbell-dot-net>

Hi All,

Not a lot here. Just letting those interested know I fire up the 13"
flat coil today. I used a brass rod running up 10 from the center of the
coil with a 1" brass sphere at the top and hung a ground rod 4" from the
top.

I fired it up and what do you know, bright white arcs to the ground rod
from the top of the sphere. No racing arcs (secondary is not coated).
This was also first light for the Geek Group MMC bank which worked
flawlessly.

Raised rod up to 10". This was a mistake. I increased voltage to get it
to fire up but only caused racing sparks. Interesting effect. They were
very white and ran from the center outward (or outward toward the
center). Anyway, it looked like one of those flat plasma disk. I ran a
few times just to check out the effect and then shorted 2 turns right on
the outer edge (last couple turns). So I'll have to unwind a couple
turns and probably apply a coating to the coil to help minimize this
problem.

Lots of fun through, especially powering it with a pole pig (low ~9kV).

Well, gotta go. Wife want to go watch a movie.

Take care,
Bart