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Got a neon-What now?




Hi All!

Been reading most all posts for about a year, but I haven't had time to
build a coil or gather parts.  I designed an electronic control for my
Brother-In-Law's massive animated Christmas light display, and that put
me in good standing to liberate a neon transformer that he isn't using
in his display.  It is a 15kV 30 mA, nice and massive, with good
quality insulators and it looks real good (and it works!)
I've made some tube coils before, and some "Ford T" coils, but haven't
done anything with a Neon.  I've been reading most of the posts
trying to absorb as much as possible in order to design my own coil, but
reason finally took over and I've decided to "copy" a proven design
before fiddlin' around trying to get creative-

I'm looking for a sort of "cookbook" coil that could be used with the
15kV 30mA neon and would be optimized for that- when I'm ready for a
pig, I'll build a new coil.

I'm on a very limited budget- can't order any fine "store bought" caps,
or buy any massive quantities of PE sheet to roll one, and my scrounging
has not turned up anything remotely usable in the .01uF range. Has anyone
had any good results with salt water caps in a neon coil? (I'm sure that
this isn't part of the "optimum" recipe!)  I've got some pretty good
RF bypass caps, primary RF chokes, assorted PVC tubing, wire, primary
tubing, stuff for gaps, etc., so this is the only part in need. 

By Brother-In-Law also has a 9kV 120 mA transformer that I can probably
also snarf up (he REALLY owes me!), would the higher current/lower
voltage be better? I "guessed" that with a static gap, 15kV would more
consistantly fire, and with the size of the 15kV neon being much larger
(and heavier) than the 9kV it looked like it could transform  more watts
intermittently. I will probably end up trying both, but what is really
the better voltage to use?  Does the gapped core in the neon (and
resulting current limiting) render my assumption on judging the potential
intermittent wattage a silly one? Is that current limited value the
data plate current? (in this case 30mA)

I apologize for the long post, but my excitement has really taken over
after hefting that neon out of the trunk of my car, I can almost smell
the ozone now (or is it burning tar that I smell!)

Thanks for your help,

Brad Alheim
... ...From beautiful Chicopee, People's Republic of Taxachusetts, U.S.A.
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12