Re: Early TC's w/o topload

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Original poster: Esondrmn@xxxxxxx 

Bill,

Those are great pictures that you have on your web site.  What could 
be better than to have Ken Strickfaden say the biggest Tesla coil 
sparks he has ever seen was at Bill Wysock's house?  What an honor.

Thanks for the pictures,

Ed Sonderman

In a message dated 1/4/2006 5:39:07 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
tesla@xxxxxxxxxx writes:
Hello Ed.

You are very correct.  Ken ususally used just a flat metal disc on the top
of his "Meg Sr." and "Meg Jr." coils.  "Meg Jr." was the coil used in Mel
Brook's "Young Frankenstine".  If you go to my web site and look for
Dick Aurandt's coil, you'll see a flat metal disc on the top and above
that, a "Griffith Park Observatory" style copper ball with corona
discharge rods on each side.  Although I don't (presently) have any
images of this coil in operation on my web site, I do have many
nice photographs of this coil in operation.  Not surprisingly, there
is almost as much corona streamers coming off the edge of this disc
as off of the two corona points.  When I replaced this copper ball
with a 20" diameter toroid, the corona streamers from the edge
of the disc all but disappeared (save for a faint corona glow that
was visable because of the photo's time duration exposure).  That
photograph clearly showed the "bending down" effect of the
coil's E-field at the top of the coil, due to the redistribution of
the major E-field around the equator of the toroid.  Also noted,
were that the power arcs and corona streamers from the toroid
were much more intense then when the copper ball was being
used.  I'll try to get these images added to that page sometime
in the near future.

Best regards,
Bill Wysock.