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["Hans Scholze" <hanscs-at-eagle.ptialaska-dot-net> (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>)]

Hello everyone,
    A little about myself: I'm 17, lived in Kodiak, AK for most of my life, and
have an obsession with electronics, computers, R/C, etc...  Also, I've never
used a list server before so if I do something wrong, let me know.  I have read
through much of the Tesla2 archives and learned enough about coiling to build
my first TC.  It was pieced together for next to nothing.  The specs are:

10,000v 10mA OBIT
15 turn 12 AWG primary
salt water caps of various sizes that I add and remove to help tuning
16" x 2" primary w/26 AWG
top load: 4' brass-plated hollow steel ball from the top of a flag pole.
all neatly and sturdily mounted with duct tape and hot glue in a cardboard
apple box :-)

When it is in good tune, I can get 6" sparks into air.
I am planning a second coil which I will construct with care and plan to put
some money into.  I used Wintesla (sorry, it is unregistered - I plan on doing
that any time now) to help design a medium sized coil:

3 or 4 OBITs in parallel (NSTs are difficult to come by because Kodiak is an
island with 10,000 people, ~4 neon signs, and no sign shop; OBITs, on the other
hand, are plentiful as nearly everyone heats their home with oil.)
15 turn primary of 1/4 Cu tubing supported on HDPE cutting boards
secondary: ~1000 ft. of 24 awg wire on 4" HDPE drain pipe; aiming for winding
length of 20-24"
cap: probably stacked poly in oil, Wintesla recommends 0.008uF
spark gap: not sure yet, maybe RQ style
top load: I have welding in school, so I was thinking of taking two stainless
bunt(?) cake pans (think half a donut mold) and setting up a jig to cut of the
lips then TIG welding them together into a torrid.  If that doesn't work out, I
have some aluminum dryer duct.

I am somewhat confused by how to determine what cap size to use.  In Wintesla,
the trans/cap match page recommends 0.008uF for a 10000vac 30mA 60Hz
transformer.  The primary page calculates my primary (15t 1/4" Cu on 1/2"
centers 6"ID 20"OD 30deg inverse cone) inductance to be 0.0775mH and the
secondary resonant freq. to be 202kHz and also recommends 0.008uF.

Does all this make sense? I have not been coiling long enough to have a "gut
instinct" to tell me whether it will work.  Thanks for any recommendations you
can provide.

P.S. The nitro truck I ordered (hobby #3) just arrived so the TC may go on the
back burner for a week or two :-)