My problems...*lol*

[Erthwin-at-aol-dot-com (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>)]

Ok apparently I have a lot of them, like I posted yesterday I started this 
whole TC project with a very limited knowledge of HV electronics and as I 
learn more it looks like I may have made a LOT of mistakes along the way. 
When I started this project I had no idea that safety gaps and line filters 
were neccesary so I never bothered to add them into my design, then there was 
that little problem with resonancy that I had and seem to keep having, at 
least I understand that one now though *s* My capacitors suffered from my 
lack of knowledge as well (at this point I've spent $25 on various capacitors 
ranging from .075uF at 250v to 5Kv at .00025uF and it turns out I can't use 
any of them *lol*) I'm going to make one last trip to the surplus store 
sometime this week in an effort to get the right cap value. My primary coil 
has been way to small from the start and I plan to fix that sometime soon as 
well, and the toroid...well it doesn't even exist yet. The spark gap has 
suffered many problems....the first was that I built it out of wood and bolts 
(don't ask why, I haven't the slightest idea), needless to say it grounded 
out long before it ever sparked, that problem was quickly fixed only to be 
replaced with another>>> my lack of an air source was allowing a continuous 
spark. I fixed that problem just yesterday by building RQ's air blast gap but 
now my spark gap has yet another problem! As I turn up the air pressure to 
quench the gap the spark goes out at around 20-30 psi but then it doesn't 
bridge the gap again until I lower the psi, after working with it for about 
ten mins or so I eventually got it to run, but it only sparks about 3 times a 
minute, I'm hoping that a larger capacitor will fix this problem but I'll 
have to wait and see. Then comes my secondary coil, I planned on making it 4" 
diameter by 16" tall so that's the form size I used but then all I could find 
was 18awg wire (this was before I knew about magnet wire so I was getting my 
wire from Lowes) so I could only fit 400 turns on my secondary, I know this 
is way too small but I was kind of hoping that if I fixed all of the other 
problems I would get at least some results and then I could go back and fix 
the secondary coil some other time. Oh well, I guess trial and error is what 
TC building is all about...I'll keep pluggin along until I get it right.

Left, left I hadda good brain but it left...
---Daniel