Hi DerekFirstly, mains earth is the RF earth and goes to all the metal in the briefcase which is the centrepoise. Secondly, spark length is such that it is just not going to connect through the PVC pipe surround separating the primary and secondary. The primary is fully enclosed. Child use means the child holding a small neon tube that is earthed and drawing sparks. It is hard to imagine a circuit path that will be a problem in this situation. I have always been a little skeptical about the situation you describe anyway. Simultaneous sparks from primary to seconday plus toroid to subject seem a bit far fetched. The circuit path for a mains = RF earth would be very largely in favour of flow through the base of the secondary rather than through the subject. Do you (or anyone) have reasonable evidence that this has increased secondary current and if so why aren't we exploiting this all the time to increase our TC sparks? I am aware the Henry Transtrom was said to have been killed in this way but I would have thought it was just a high power coil that was the problem.
Cheers Peter www.tesladownunder.com----- Original Message ----- From: "Derek" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Peter,..... I am interested as to how you have made this coil safe "for supervised children to use". I realise that the power levels and performance mean that the risk of electrocution directly are very small, but to my mind the most dangerous aspect of you coil is the possibility of a primary to secondary arc whilst a "tasting" was in progress. In this case there is a very real danger of connecting the 6Kv@30mA output from the NST via the secondary and arc channel to the "taster".Have you designed the coil in a way to limit or prevent this possibility ? Derek
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