Re: my first light!!

["sundog" <sundog-at-timeship-dot-net> (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>)]

Ouchie...

 Runnin' it in the rain is a big no-no to begin with (unless youre
in a *DRY* indoor area.  I'd personally prefer you not to
electrocute yourself.
  And a runtime of 5 min is probably going to be pushing even a
commercial cap/well overbuilt system pretty hard.  I get maybe a
2-3 minute run on my little 2" coils, and the MMC is pretty toasty,
needing to cool off.  It's great ya got it all running, and I hope
you took notes of what you did.  But please, wait till it's dry,
even if you do run it for 5 min at a time ;)

 Nice work too!
                                                        Sundog
-----Original Message-----
From: Tesla list <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Date: Thursday, August 31, 2000 10:56 PM
Subject: my first light!!


>Original poster: "Pholp Smiff" <kawanze-at-hotmail-dot-com>
>
>
>The one i was off work, home from school, and finally finished my
tesla
>coil, it started raining and raining and lightning and raining. I
was
>anxious to get it up, that's all i was thinking about all day at
school (im
>only 16). So i still went out, against my better judgement. Put
everything
>on top of trashcans (to keep it off the ground) and made little
umbrellas
>for all the parts out of spare polyethylene i never used and then,
finally
>put my 24" diameter toroid on top. I called my friend and had him
come over.
>I got everything situated and double checked all connections (by
this time
>the rain was starting to let up) and told my friend to throw the
switch and
>here's what happened:
>
>Nothing at all; i checked the outlet with my multimeter and found
it was
>dead. So i got out the old 100 ft extension cord and plugged it in
>elsewhere. The spark gap turned white and started buzzing loud,
but there
>was no breakout whatsoever. My coil was designed for 12kv-at-60ma but
i was
>running it at 30ma, because i didn't have enough capacitance. I
took off my
>24"(*6") toroid, unscrewing the bolts and complex connection i
engineered. I
>took a smaller one i made earlier, 4 inch by 20 inches and rigged
it on with
>electrical tape and flicked the switch, nothing at all. I was
beginning to
>think there was a break in my secondary or somehting disastrous
like that. I
>took off the toroid and through it like a frisbee. I went inside
searching
>desperately for anything that would work. I saw a small nerf ball.
I grabbed
>it and crumpled some aluminum foil around it and ran outside. I
just jammed
>this on the bolt up top then electrical taped the wire onto it. I
walked
>once again slowly over to the outlet to plug it in, already
knowing this
>wouldn't work. And then turned around to look at the coil and
there were
>bright blue sparks going all over the place!
>it looked like a giant (2 foot diameter) plasma ball. I let it run
and
>watched the sparks dance all over the sphere for about 5 minutes,
then i
>heard a loud *POP* and there was a brilliant orange flash and a
flaming
>piece of trash flew out from underneith and landed right next to
me.. it was
>half a capacitor, still smoking, oil dripping off of it. The
sparks shrunk
>to about half size and i decided it would be best to turn it off
right then
>before something else bad happened.
>And so i went inside and put it all away.
>
>I hope i didn't bore you too much. Im just excited and surprised
that it
>worked! about 8" sparks with a coil designed to run at twice the
power. and
>im glad i finished it when i did... just in time for science fair
>)
>
>
>
>
>