Re: MY FIRST TESLA!!

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

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

Hi Danny,

Cool isn't it!!!!

The primary coil and cap have to be tuned to the same natural frequency as your
secondary coil and top load.  A little hard to do by trial and error but you
hit it with your caution tape capacitor ;-))

Your primary would be better if made from a loop of bare copper 1/4 inch tubing
or bare wire where you could easily tap it at any point you wanted.  Then you
would be able to adjust the primary coil to match the secondary frequency very
easily just by moving the connection point around at will.  You would then not
be so dependant on getting the capacitor size "just right" but you would also
have the primary coil tap position as another adjustment.  I think that may
make getting you coil to spark with many different capacitors far easier.

Cheers,

        Terry

At 02:03 AM 10/12/2002 -0400, you wrote: 
>
> FINALLY!! I have been messing with this thing for weeks well actually months,
> with different power supplies, toroids, primarys etc.
>
> I got my 15kv 30ma from ups about a week ago then promptly ordered some mini
> caps from geekgroup, but couldnt wait so I tried a few saltwater caps to no
> avail then tonight I was rummaging through my garage for a dialectric and
> happened upon a roll of caution tape I laid out some and made a poly cap and
> hooked it up and whammmo 10" arcs to the ground and 6-7" streamers flowing
> like dancing landers!!
> I was soooo excited I was yellign at my wife to come look , she got scared
> and went back in the house heh, shortly after I flashed through the
> dialectric and went from 10 layers of poly to 12 and got almost no effect and
> eventually burned through the dialectric. 
>
> Thx for the help all of you with your sites and stuff, 
> My tesla
> secondary= 760 turns of 26 guage aluminum coated wire on 2" X 15" abs pipe
> primary= 17 turns of speaker wire wrapped around a AM PM cup heh
> spark gap= just 2  1/2" copper pipes
> power= 15kv 30 ma nst
> toroid= 4" styrofoam ball covered in alum foil (PS the easy way to do this is
> to cut the alum foil intolike 3" X 3" strips and spray them with a light coat
> of spray adhesive then stick to ball and spoon smooth.
>
> a curious question .. why did #2 poly cap not perform as well as the 1st? I
> thought more dialectric it would perform better?
>
>
> AHHHH I cant wait for my MMC's!!
>
> Danny Ray