first light

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Original poster: "Andrew Genseal" <aggniu@xxxxxxxxxxx>

Well, last weekend I finally got my first coil fired up.  During this first 
light, I made a temporary primary coil from 14G (tapped at turn 12 I 
believe)wire just to make sure I would have enough turns before I went and 
spent the time and money on copper tubing.
Anyways, the specs of my coil are as follows: Transformer: 12kV 30mA NST; 2 
parallel rolled poly caps for a total of ~6.44nF; primary: 12T 14G copper 
wire spaced ~1" between turns; static spark gap consisting of 2 1/4" 
carriage bolts and a fan for quenching; 4.5" x 17.75" secondary wound with 
22G magnet wire; flex torroid of 15" avg diameter by 5" section 
diameter.  Oh yeah, Rf ground: 90lb anvil on a concrete floor with a wet 
rag between them.
At any rate, I tuned the system as best I could and found that at best I 
was seeing 9" strikes to a grounded conductor.  Even then, the sparks I was 
getting were very dim and looked more like corona than lightening.  I 
understand that this is not a high power system or one of ideal (or even 
close to ideal) components but I was expecting a little bit more out of the 
system.  The problem seems to boil down to the fact that being a college 
student, my money is very thin and I am looking for the best improvement 
for the dollar at this point. First step will be a 1/4" copper tube primary 
spaced at 1/4" between turns.  After that, I don't know where the best 
direction to go would be.  I would greatly appreciate any and all input on 
suggestions that might improve the performance of my coil based on the vast 
expertise of this list.

Thank you very much
-Andy G.