Corby

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

Original poster: "Dr. Duncan Cadd by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <dunckx-at-freeuk-dot-com>

Hi All!

My word, what a day we've had!  Thanks to Alan Sharp for being mine
host at St. Ninian's church hall, what a gathering!  If there's any
more coils / people next year, either we move out into the car park
and do everything at night or the hall needs an extension ;-)

Aside from some great coils, we had a neat Van de Graaf and Mike
Harrison brought a mini-Marx bank which was cute.  Colin Dancer had a
500VA SRSG coil with one of the US bulk buy Landgren toroids and this
piece of metalwork really looked the business - the output was also
impressive for a mere half k (SI unit, one f.a.r.t.power).  Mike
Tucknott and Brian le Page had their counterpart to Alan's Bride of
Frankenstein going.  Alan's solid state coil did some excellent
impersonations of a flame, at high "break" rate the sparks turned
yellow for some strange reason, very flame-like and most impressive.
Best of all, you could almost play tunes on it.  Next year I
understand it will be programmed to play "Nearer my God to Thee" . . .

The film in my camera was too slow to be any good, but there were lots
of neat digital cameras in evidence and I do hope someone will post
some pictures of the exhibits, it was well worth it (and I had to
leave early so probably missed the big twins getting going.)  Also a
lot of list members were there - aside from those already mentioned,
Ritchie Burnett, Chuck Hobson, Jason Petrou, Henry Hallam, Bob Golding
(sorry I missed picking up the duct!) Nick Field plus others -
including Aleks from the Geek Group.  I've missed out probably thirty+
people and half a dozen coils, but the old grey matter is agog with
what it has been treated to today :-)))))

I have to take my hat off to Henry, our youngest coiler by far.  To
see his reworking of the term "breadboard construction" doing the
business (despite some very suspicious smells of toasted insulation -
or maybe it was the bread on the breadboard - or was that the
insulation? - and a stupendous plasma several inches long squirting
out of his triggered, blown and magnetically-quenched gap!) and by
early afternoon spitting out some most impressive sparks - well, it
didn't look as if it ought to, but it did, and it kept doing it too
and without having to be poked every few seconds, which is more than
the micro-magnifier managed.  The micro-magnifier succeeded in
demonstrating that it's often the really small coils which can be oh
so picky, in this case in the earthing department.  The induction coil
powering it added it's own irritating tendencies to the recipe, though
it eventually coughed up some 1,5-2" sparks, thanks to a jump lead to
a radiator, but not without a lot of poking.  The Q&D VTTC was happily
a lot less temperamental, and sat there for a long time just doing its
thing and not making any fuss or noise about it :-)

Great day, great exhibits and a lot of good-to-meet people!  We had
visitors from as far afield as France!  The few photos I have of the
micro-magnifier will appear probably in a week or so and I will post
details as and when.

Dunckx
Geek#1113 G-1