Re: 1st Tesla Coil LIGHTED YAY!

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

Original poster: Esondrmn-at-aol-dot-com 

In a message dated 1/26/04 10:52:41 AM Pacific Standard Time, 
tesla-at-pupman-dot-com writes:


>Hi Ravi,
>
>Great!  If you are getting corona like in Antonio's pictures on your
>capacitors, that's where your streamer length is going.  The higher the
>quality of your capacitor the longer the streamers will get.  It was the
>same for my foil wrapped jugs.  When I glued the foil tightly to the glass,
>it reduced the corona, and increased the streamer length.  Applying corona
>dope helped cut the corona from the foil somewhat but it still would punch
>thru.  It did look cool though in a mad scientist kind of way.
>
>How big is your topload? (toroid or sphere)  It sounds as though you just
>have a bolt thread up there and nothing attached.  A sphere needs to be the
>same diameter as the coil or larger.  A toroid should have the inside
>diameter as large as the coil or larger.  You will have to adjust your tap
>setting for whatever topload you use.
>
>You may also want to adjust your spark gap.  Disconnect the primary and
>capacitor and then set the gap for the largest gap the transformer will
>jump.  Reconnect the capacitor and primary and have a try.
>
>Blow your capacitor at the science fair! (stagehand for good luck)
>
>David E Weiss


David,

Ravi's coils is set up now with the toroid removed and 12 bottles for the 
capacitor.  We don't have enough primary turns or enough primary 
capacitance to tune with a toroid at this time.  Maybe a real small 
one.  Maybe after the science fair, some one can donate 5 or 6 mmc caps to 
him and we can get this thing going?  If someone does this it would 
probably be good to solder them together in advance for him, I am not sure 
he has a soldering iron.  His primary cap right now is only about .008 ufd 
or .009 ufd and needs to be about 5 times larger unless he rebuilds his 
primary with about 16 turns instead of 8.  Even then we will need more 
capacitance.

Ed Sonderman