[TCML] Any one using a 7200 V pole pig?

[cbroring at aol.com]

I've been messing with my first Tesla coil for several weeks now.  It 
has a 3.5" x 20" secondary, two OBITs in parallel for power, a sucker 
gap, and 13nF beer bottle salt water primary capacitor.  After fiddling 
with it a lot,  I managed 28 inch strikes between the break out point 
and a metal tool chest, my official measuring technique.

Today I replaced the OBIT's with an old 7200V pole pig that weighs 
nearly 100 pounds and has been out of it's oil for years..  I used 4.7 
ohms resistive ballast, and ran it off 120V with the low voltage 
windings paralleled..  I had to reduce the spark gap to about half of 
what I was using with the OBIT's to get it to fire.  The result was 8 
inch streamers and a screech from the spark gap.  I added another 6 nF 
to the primary capacitor, re-tuned the primary coil, and the streamer 
length doubled. The spark gap also sounded more normal.  The ballast 
resistors are rated at 450 watts and didn't get all that hot so I 
wasn't putting much power through the system.

I think I understand whats going on here.  The OBIT's were running near 
resonance with the 12 nf capacitor and along with the wide spark gap 
setting I was seeing much higher voltages across the primary capacitor 
then I have with the pole pig.  Now I have low voltage and lots of 
current available now so I need a lot of capacitance and a small 
primary inductor with high current capacity.  It's also going to be 
harder to cool the narrow spark gap.

My question is whether a 7200 V pole pig is worth using?  I see that I 
am going to have some issues to work around using this low voltage.  
Also going to have to drink a lot more beer to provide bottles for 
capacitors.  I'm thinking it may be a better approach to find a higher 
voltage transformer or even just a few more OBIT's

Any comments or suggestions?

Charlie
K3YA