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first light



Original poster: "Andrew Genseal" <aggniu@xxxxxxxxxxx>

Well, last weekend I finally got my first coil fired up. During this first light, I made a temporary primary coil from 14G (tapped at turn 12 I believe)wire just to make sure I would have enough turns before I went and spent the time and money on copper tubing.
Anyways, the specs of my coil are as follows: Transformer: 12kV 30mA NST; 2 parallel rolled poly caps for a total of ~6.44nF; primary: 12T 14G copper wire spaced ~1" between turns; static spark gap consisting of 2 1/4" carriage bolts and a fan for quenching; 4.5" x 17.75" secondary wound with 22G magnet wire; flex torroid of 15" avg diameter by 5" section diameter. Oh yeah, Rf ground: 90lb anvil on a concrete floor with a wet rag between them.
At any rate, I tuned the system as best I could and found that at best I was seeing 9" strikes to a grounded conductor. Even then, the sparks I was getting were very dim and looked more like corona than lightening. I understand that this is not a high power system or one of ideal (or even close to ideal) components but I was expecting a little bit more out of the system. The problem seems to boil down to the fact that being a college student, my money is very thin and I am looking for the best improvement for the dollar at this point. First step will be a 1/4" copper tube primary spaced at 1/4" between turns. After that, I don't know where the best direction to go would be. I would greatly appreciate any and all input on suggestions that might improve the performance of my coil based on the vast expertise of this list.


Thank you very much
-Andy G.