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Light Bulb Experiment (ala Brent Turner)

> Tesla List wrote:
> >
> <SNIP>
> > >    The 'banjo' effect images are quite striking and beautiful, plus
> > >    there are a few others showing myself sitting atop an insulated
> > >    table tossing 4 foot sparks off metal rods and my fingers! (BTW
> > >    I am wearing chain-mail meat cutter's gloves which are connected
> > >    to the table via wires hidden in my sleeves.)
> > >
> > >    - Enjoy!
> > >
> > > - Brent
> >
All,

After looking at Brent's picture (BRENT_1.JPG) showing a 40W bulb being
lit from current coming off his coil, I decided to replicate this on my
10" coil (without me being an integral part of the experiment. ;^) I
took a standard 120V ceramic light socket and mounted it to a piece of
wood. A short piece of magnet wire was connected to one terminal of the
socket, and the other end was run to the reverse side of the wood block
and secured with a piece of conductive aluminum heating-duct tape. The
other socket terminal ran to a 1 foot piece of HV wire. By setting the
assembly on the top of the toroid, I could position it so that the loose
end of the HV wire just poked out from the outer edge of the toroid. Any
current flowing through the corona would flow through any light bulb
screwed into the socket.

I then proceeded to try various sizes of incandescent light bulbs to see
if they would light from the current drawn by the corona coming off the
HV wire. Although a 40 W bulb would light (orange color), I got the best
results from 15 and 25 Watt bulbs, lighting them to almost full
brilliance. I also succeeded in blowing out the filament of one 15 watt
bulb - this bulb had a filament that started jumping all over the place
once current started flowing through it, and it finally just openned up.
I'm also thinking about getting one of those trick "party" bulbs that
has a dancing filament to see how it would work.

Anyway... I made an interesting discovery: If I had a fairly steady
streamer that didn't arc to gound, the 25W bulb lit up at a fairly
bright and constant level. However, once I got heavy discharges to
ground, the brightness level declined significantly, and my AC primary
current climbed from about 22A to >28A off the 120V main. I don't
understand why this should be! I would have expected that the bulb would
brighten, since the discharge current to ground clearly seems to be much
higher than the corona streamers. The fact that my primary current
climbs also would suggest that I am processing more power under this
condition. 

Some other information that may be relevant... the system's 15 KV 120 MA
neons and tank cap resonate at about 60 Hz (by design), and I'm using
about 170 uF of PFC capacitance. The gaps are a combination of static
and vacuum, totaling about 0.54".

Any ideas about what is going on??


-- Bert --