faraday cage to reduce primary strike?

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

Original poster: "Laurence Davis by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <meknar-at-hotmail-dot-com>

Instead of using a strike rail to reduce the possibility
of a primary strike...  How about using a conic sectioned
faraday cage around the primary and secondary.  The Toroid
would need to be outside of the cage as the secondary's
capacitance is a function of the distance to the surrounding
area/room.  I suggest the conic section as I expect the EM field
around the coil could be efficiently contained in such a shape.

My only concern is that the cage to work properly needs to be
conductive, which then leads to core losses and eddy currents.
Perhaps having the coil and toroid sufficiently separated would
reduce the effect.  Adding a transmission line to the toroid would
then suffer from coronal losses unless heavy insulation was used.
perhaps a thick PE tube filled with transformer oil?... hmmm...

any ideas?
larry.