Pressurized / gas-filled secondary? And an OBIT question.

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Original poster: "Josh Adams" <knewter@xxxxxxxxx>

I'm building my second TC ever right now (first one was 5 years ago 
my senior year of high school - used a 15kV 30mA NST and got around 
27").  I'm wanting to make this one significantly more 
impressive.  In my reading, I came across this:

<http://www.pupman.com/current/rstephens/mtc-a1.html>http://www.pupman.com/current/rstephens/mtc-a1.html

Robert filled his secondary with a dielectric insulating gas up to 
+1.5PSI.  I'm assuming this was to avoid sparks through the interior 
of the secondary?  Also, what's the importance of the pressure?

I'm not building anything extremely impressive.  I've just got an 
18kV OBIT that doesn't have an amperage or kVA rating anywhere on it, 
but I'm assuming it'll be ~25mA.

As a second question, how should I test the amperage on my 
OBIT?  I've still not run this thing since acquiring it five years 
ago...runs on 220.

--
-josh
<http://www.purevolume.com/valign>www.purevolume.com/valign