bewildered

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Matt Skidmore by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <fox-at-woozle-dot-org>

Ive been having some trouble with my coil lately. its outputting about 1.5
foot arcs to a grounded source when i feel i should be getting some more
out of it. this is my lareger coil as seen on foxxz-dot-net. ill give a brief
description of it here
my mmc is composed of 4 capacitors of 15kv .02 mfd each. i usually use 3
of these in series.
a 7 gap spak gap. it has to make it through all the gaps to fire. 
15kv 30 ma NST
18 turn primary tapped at 16.75 i think
4.5 inch pvs wound 26 inches. 

the topload is pretty null. i have been using mainly a small tin can. it
shoots sparks in all directions. probably if i could find some sort of
torriod or metal sphere this would improve it greatly. the secondary is
grounded and the first windings start about 1 inch abover the primary.

i have a rotary spark gap in the making but it has not reached a sync
state yet. luckily my college has the strobes and equipment to test for
sync. i was wondering what improvements might be made to boost
performance.

-matt