OLTC II makes its debut

In May 2004, I took the OLTC II down to the UK Teslathon in Derby. There was enough clearance to really crank it up as far as it would go and see what happened. The result was a ground strike just over 6ft. This was running at 400 bps with a second toroid and 18uF of tank capacitance installed. The bang energy would have been about 8 Joules (or slightly over 3kW power consumption)

The arcs were not as long as with coils running at lower break rates, but they were impressively bright and hot. We tried letting it strike a metal pole connected to ground via a lightbulb. The filament was quickly blown to pieces but the bulb still lit, with an arc inside the envelope heating the tungsten white-hot. There is a picture of this in Derek Woodroffe's gallery.

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Pics by James Pawson thedatastream.4hv.org

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