First Light - And Then Darkness...

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: "C. Sibley" <a37chevy@xxxxxxxxx>

Pictures at http://nationalvintageracing.com/temp

I put together a coil this weekend using a secondary
that I wound 25+ years ago in high school.  I know
that the aspect of the coil is all wrong, and that the
primary is too loosely coupled, etc...

I had a few interesting problems with the sparks
refusing to break out from the sphere. Instead it
would break out from the top of the secondary. Moving
the sphere down by removing the insulator and adding a
breakout point to the top of the sphere did the trick.
 Can someone explain the corona suppression rings I've
seen on some coils?  Is it a closed or open loop, and
how is it connected?  Seems like that might have
helped...

I was able to get a nice brush out of it but the
suddenly it stopped working.  I immediately suspected
the NST since I'm running it without protection.  I
tried firing each leg independently to the center tap
and each side seems to be working.  Is there a better
way to test an NST?

The spark gaps will not fire with the tank circuit
attached.  So it seems to me that either the
transformer is bad or one of my capacitors let go.
Any suggestions?

BTW:  This was my first coil, primarily an experiment
just to prove that I could do it before expending the
effort on my pole pig big boy.  I consider it a
success since it tuned pretty much exactly where I
expected.  Kudos to JAVATC and Bart...

Curt.



	
		
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