Powering a coil with an electrostatic machine

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Original poster: "Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <acmq-at-compuland-dot-com.br>

Hi:

I tried to power my transformerless system with an electrostatic
machine instead of a NST. I connected the gap between one pole of
the machine and the ground, and turned the machine at a speed that
results in 50 uA of output current. With the gap set to about 
10000 V and 1 nF of primary capacitance, I get 5 breaks per
second. The resulting input power is a mere 250 mW in this way.

The idea works, but the output corona is barely visible in normal
light, although clearly audible. Sparks to a nearby object reach
2-3 cm (the rule of 1.7*sqrt(p) inches predicts 2.16 cm). That
machine alone produces 15 cm sparks...

A picture and some additional comments on how to increase the
performance in this mode of operation are at:
http://www.coe.ufrj.br/~acmq/tesla/mres4.html
The picture:
http://www.coe.ufrj.br/~acmq/tesla/mres4ele.jpg

Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz