OLTC II More action

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

Original poster: "Steve Conner" <steve.conner-at-optosci-dot-com> 

Hi all

After considerably more tweeking I have the OLTC II working pretty well. I
cured the flashover/corona problem by modifying the strike rail, and fixed
the spurious crowbar triggering by shielding the sense resistor.

With the flashover thing fixed, and the crowbar circuit behaving itself, I
was able to turn the voltage up as far as it would go. When I did, and I was
pleased to find it would break out without a breakout point.

The settings for this picture: 14uF tank cap, 1kV charging voltage (=7
Joules), 100bps. I used low bps to quieten the thing down a bit, and limit
the spark length. It doesn't really show in the picture, but they were
getting pretty close to the primary circuit- I could see corona coming off
the wires whenever the streamers swung near. It is great to watch at 100bps,
the streamers roll around slowly, and make that "someone getting
electrocuted in the movies" noise :)

http://www.scopeboy-dot-com/tesla/oltc_Zappp.jpg

(not a very good pix- camera shake)

I could probably do with a small toroid underneath the big one to discourage
the streamers from going downwards. Any suggestions from the field control
experts? Could I get away with, say, a 15" diameter ring made of 1" copper
tubing? Or should I use something fatter?

Full details on how the OLTC II was made at

http://www.scopeboy-dot-com/tesla/

Steve Conner