First light with 833 tube coil, then silence

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: "David Rieben" <drieben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Hi all,

Finally got the VTTC all wired together and tried out
first light tonight. Was having trouble with the stacato
driver as I couldn't get too much of anything out with
the stacatto driver energized. I did start getting about
8" continous "swords " with the variac turned up to
about 120 volts and drawing 20 amps (w/out stacatto).
Didn't seem too efficient but this is my first time with
a VTTC, ever. It's basically patterned after Steve Ward's
22" 833A VTTC: 
<http://www.stevehv.4hv.org/VTTCfaq.htm>http://www.stevehv.4hv.org/VTTCfaq.htm
the third picture down. At least it did work some until
I started trying to vary the resistance in the grid leak
bypass resistor (R1). Now all of the sudden it won't
put out anything, nada, zilch! I tested that resistor,
the capacitor C2, and even tried swapping out 833A
tubes, all to no avail. Every component checked out
good and changing out the tube with spares didn't
solve the problem either. Can any of you vauum tube
gurus help me out here? :^))

Thanks,
David