Tesla Coils

[Jon Lawton]

I tried to do this a few years ago, but didn't meet with much sucess. A few things I learned:

-What you use to discharge at the top of your coil is very important! It is acting as half of a cap (the discharge torroid, sphere, whatever, and the Earth).
-Run a "low" voltage through the primary, and hook the output of the secondary up to an osciliscope. Adjust either your capacitance or inductance to hit resonance.

I'm sure there were other things I that found out but I think those were the big ones. If you look around you can find some neat programs to help you design your coil. "WinTesla" comes to mind. If I find it laying around I'll send it your way.

Best of luck to you!