realistic expectations from mini coil ??

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

Original poster: "Jon Lagler" <rockcrawl-at-enter-dot-net> 

I've just finished a new mini coil and was wondering I should expect for 
maximum spark length. Primary is a flat spiral, 10 turns of #8 solid round 
copper, 2.5" id, 9.5" od.. Secondary is ~1458 turns of .006" wire, machine 
wound on a 1.75" dia cardboard (paper towel tube), 8.75" winding height, 
saturated and coated with Techspray Fine-L-Kote HT. Transformer is a 4000v 
30mA NST. Capacitor is five 2kV .15uf CDE 942c's in series for 30 nf. Spark 
gap is a single static gap using two tungsten electrodes spaced as far as 
possible. Top load is 1.5"x4" tin foil covered toroid, will be upgraded to 
a 2"x6" spun toroid. TeslaMap calculates a theoretical maximum spark length 
of 19.1 inches. Assuming my coil is not nearly perfect I was hoping to get 
at least 10 inches or so. So far I have been able to get 5 inches to a 
grounded object . What can I realisticly expect from this thing? Any 
suggestions are welcome as far as how to improve the performance. I suspect 
the larger, smoother toroid will help, but I don't have it yet.

Jon