My old spark gap coil still works well. I designed it around a 100ma cold cathode lighting transformer that I lugged around for years before finally building the coil in about 1999. My old website described it in detail. (I’ll add a link here soon.) About three years ago I made some “improvements” to the coil which resulted in toasting my transformer. Its a common occurrence to kill the transformer if you don’t have a good filter to block the high frequencies from the tank circuit from getting into the neon transformer. I had a RC filter which worked great until I beefed up the wire in the tank circuit.
I purchased 6, 4500 volt 410 ma transformers from C&H sales, before they closed up shop. At someones suggestion (I’ve forgotten the website) I cascaded four of the transformers to obtain 18,000 volts at about 200ma. I added a Terry Fritz style protection filter. I also built a Jacob’s ladder out of two transformers. It makes a wicked arc!. I’ll create a page for the old coil and the Jacob’s ladder real soon. The photo here shows the old coil and the new transformer built into a wheeled cart.(It’s heavy!)
Now its time to build a new coil to match the transformer. I think I will design it to work well with a set of two transformers.
I’ll show the progress on the new coil here.
Craig