Tesla Coils And Other High-Voltage Fun!   Above: Scratchy video frame of yours truly posing with the spoils of his trip to a local utility's junkyard.  Moral:  If you have an interesting story, you can buy anything! By J. Aaron Holmes, N7OE   UPDATE: I've just recently gotten my 1kW 3.5" coil working, and this page was so hopelessly out-of-date that I decided to delete it (which is why there's almost nothing here anymore).  Here are a few random pictures of high-voltage goodness that I'll share in lieu of a real page, and I'll get back to you with the real page sometime soon ;-)   Above: My definition of "FireWire" ;-)  A fragment of cinder block undergoes vitrification by means of 30,000 volts, derived from two backfed utility transformers in series.  Power:  About 10kW. This was a test of my resistive ballast, which turned out to be somewhat insufficient for this purpose, but was fine for Tesla coiling (below).   Above: An old CD-ROM is dealt finishing blows from my completed 3.5" Tesla coil. Arcs in excess of three feet long strike it repeatedly in this fantastical five-second exposure shot with a friend's Canon EOS Digital Rebel camera. I'm in the process of building a 8x8x8-foot wire cage (Faraday cage) in my garage to house Tesla Coil #2.  More on that very soon.  The goal is to produce seven-foot (or better) arcs, however that will only be measurable with the coil outside; my garage is too small. 73, J. Aaron Holmes, N7OE Page last updated:  March 19, 2006  Go back to silicon-arcana.com