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Re: Yesterday's GNATS meeting (fwd)





---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 07:59:35 EDT
From: Hollmike <Hollmike-at-aol-dot-com>
To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Re: Yesterday's GNATS meeting (fwd)

Hi All,
    I wanted to write about my visit to Chip's house Sunday.  I see he beat me
to it with the details of the day.   It was an awesome site when he created
the two foot Jacob's Ladder!!   It seemed that the only limit to the spark
length he could create was the size of his garage.  
   There was a bit of concern the first time a streamer hit the garage door
opener, but happily,  it survived.  It was exciting to see such a display as
my coil is powered by two 15kV, 30ma neons and cannot produce nearly the
output of Chip's.  I will have to get MORE POWER now.   I learned about rolled
cap construction from Chip.   I will have to construct one of these now that I
have seen how well they work.    
    I had a great time visiting and Chip was a great host.  I hope I get the
chance to see his coil operate outside to see just how long the sparks could
go.  I am betting 6 to 8 feet without targets to limit the length.  
    As Chip stated,  one of the most interesting observations of the day was
the waveform of the output as seen on his scope.  I looked just like a plot I
once made of the transient response of an RLC circuit suddendly energized and
with no initial charge on the cap.   I plotted this equation with parameters
from my coil, and the waveform was similar to what Chip's coil produced.  I
will replot this and place it on my website in the near future now that I have
seen how well the equation works to predict what the output should look like. 
     Thanks again, Chip, for a great show.  You have inspired me to upgrade my
coil as soon as possible.   You can expect to be invited to the first meeting
of the Tesla Coil Builder's of Golden in the near future.
 Mike Hollingsworth