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Re: More Questions...


>>
Has anyone ever had problems with there house wiring when running a 
coil?  When I plugged in my coil to do some testing, I noticed a flash in 
the corner of my eye.  I quickly unpluged the coil.  I then tried it 
again, to find that one of the electrical outlets in my basement was 
sparking when I plugged in the coil.  Our house isn't old, so I can't 
blame the problem on old house wiring.  It really scared me as I don't 
know if the other outlets in the house could have sparked.  Since then, 
I haven't fired.  The coil supply is only to 30 ma 15,000 V neons.  One 
of them has since died.
<<
Yeow!  I think you did the right thing in unplugging/shutting down.  It 
sounds like you are getting a bunch of kickback or something into the 
house wiring.  The death of one of your neons seems to confirm this too.
I have never had this particular problem, so I can't tell you how I fixed
the problem, but here are some suggestions.

Check out your neons first.  If they are shorted out in some weird
way, the center tap/ground may actually be energized.  You can test
this by using a piece of high voltage wire and touching it to a known
ground.  If you see sparks, then something is wrong.

Ground the base of the coil to a separate ground.  In the past, I used
a 3' rod in the ground outside the garage.  While this wasn't perfect,
it worked for my 3" dia. coil.  Your 6" coil will take a little more 
investment.

You should have a saftey gap that is grounded to your RF ground (not the 
house ground).  This gap should have about a 1/4" spacing and be made of
three elements:

-----O----------------- Neon output
      O--- Ground
-----O----------------- Neon output

You should also have some chokes both before and after the saftey gap.

Finally, I would check the tuning of your coil.  If everything is in tune,
you should get little if any kickback.  You don't need to have anything 
like a signal generator or scope, just a little patience.  

It's hard to tell the spark length that you should be getting.  I believe
that 30ma is a little low to be powering a 6" coil.  However, I can get 
3' streamers from my 4" coil from 60ma.  

Basically you need to keep fiddling with it.  One of the first improvements
that you could make while you are waiting for the commercial cap would
be to try making a rolled cap.  I have had great luck with mine. 

Now that there is a slowdown here at work (holidays) and the scanner
is readily available, I will post some images of my 4" coil in action.


Chip