A few questions and thanks

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Chris Brick by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <cbrick-at-rebelbase-dot-com>

First, the thanks...  To Jim Heagy for hosting a great 
event.  Unfortunately I could only make it for Saturday evening but it was 
well worth it.  To Kennan for having one of the coolest coils I have ever 
seen, amazing discharges for such small input power.  Oh, and a thanks to 
Greg and Kelek for lighting the fire under my butt to get the big coil 
project back on the bench.  I met a lot of great folks there but didn't get 
enough names...let's do it again real soon.

Questions:

I haven't been able to get the equation working to figure out joules per 
cap.  I have 4 Maxwell .02uF 45KV pulse caps that I will be running in 
parallel.  I have always been terrible with math but can run a nationwide 
network in my sleep, go figure.

Maxwell caps have a fill screw on one end which is also the end that is 
marked for high voltage.
Are there any problems running them on their sides?
If there is air space in the cap, should it be filled or have others found 
this to be ok?

I am going to need to discharge the caps remotely after shutdown.  I have 
read where others have used a pole with a wire and resistor to softly 
(hmmmm....) bring the voltage down instead of one big crack.  Any advice on 
resistor values and design consideration would be very welcome.

I will be powering my coil with one (or more) of 
these:  http://www.teslacoils-dot-org/rcs1000/index.html

I'll try to take pictures of the whole process and document the design 
decisions on www.teslacoils-dot-org.

Thanks,

Chris