RE: More information on Nightmare Mikes 90kV/270mA Tesla Coil

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Original poster: "Godfrey Loudner" <ggreen-at-gwtc-dot-net> 

When I was a young teen, the most streamer length I got was
maybe 4", but I was satisfied. Being ignorant of the effects
of variables, I simply made my coils out of anything I
could find. If it looked like a tesla coil, then it was a
tesla coil. After seeing a picture of a big transformer in
Tesla's lab, I quickly concluded that one of my big x-ray
transformers would do the trick. I was already in possession
of a large variac (I now estimate 25 kva). I had excellent
ballast coils, the likes of which I have not seen again. I
found a number of them at the railroad junkyard. They were
heavy metal boxes about a foot on each side. After taking
one apart, I found a coil of heavy wire around a core. I
have a strong memory that I also found a second coil that
was deliberately shorted. I seem to remember being confused
by this shorting feature. About 30 large pickle jars were
used for a cap. Without my tesla coil attached, I did a
run on the spark gap. As raised the voltage from the variac,
the jars began to glow and hiss, with fingers of electricity
trying to reach over the glass. The spark gap roared
as never before. Now I was finally one my way to the big
time---move aside Tesla! Now I hooked in the tesla coil. The
spark gap had not exploded yet, but I saw blue fingers of
electricity crawling over the base board of the tesla coil.
The static gap started and I got NOTHING off the top of the
tesla coil. But I did see blue sparks snapping somewhere on
the primary. Needing more power I thought, I swung the variac
up until one of the jars punctured. The sudden silence returned
reality to my senses. The x-ray transformer I used was much
more powerful than the one Mike used. Such were my experiences
with an x-ray transformer driven tesla coil.

Godfrey Loudner