newbie questions

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

Original poster: "harry by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <harry-at-prcn-dot-org>

Hi

My name is Lance Williams , I am 36 yrs. old and I live in British Columbia 
Canada , I have a basic understanding of electricity and electronics,I have 
been lurking on the list since Xmas, in that time i have built a coil with 
the following specs:

-3" dryer duct toroid 16" dia. oa.  a bit small but the kids prefer it over 
the 4"(lots more sparks :)
-14 turns 1/4" copper tube primary spaced 3/8" apart 45deg. inverted 
conical 8" id. 19" od.
-4.25" pvc secondary form 30" long with 25" winding of 24Ga magnet wire.
-powered with 2  12/30 nst's (soon to be 4 :)
-static gap 1"copper tube 6" long 11pcs. for 10 gaps at .02" each and 2 MOV 
fans for quenching.
-2 homemade rolled poly caps .022 uf ea. in series  and an ESR of 19 and 18.
-#4Ga welding cable for a ground wire to a 10' copper clad ground rod.

With this setup i am achieving 26" continuous spark w/o breakout point and 
32" w/ breakout points.


Now for the questions:

-Can the ESR of the caps be lowered by wrapping it tighter and would  there 
be any improvement in performance of the coil ?

-What does "zero crossing" mean ?

-Out of curiosity I modified a couple of old washing machine induction 
motors (1725 rpm) to run synchronous, the second one runs a little hotter 
but seems to be starting and locking into sync ok but the first one has 
trouble starting and when it does it can run in either direction and gets 
very hot .Neither motor has cap. start ,just a start winding.I removed 
about 1" from the rotors on both motors (4 flats).Does anyone know if there 
is a way to save this motor or is it junk ?

- I have some 12.5" Dia. pvc sewer pipe that I could use for a secondary 
coil could someone tell me what the minimum power requirements would have 
to be for such a coil ?

THANK YOU to all who contribute to this list it has been very educational 
for me and has sparked ( pun intended) a renewed interest in electricity 
for me .

Lance