We built our caps using the salt water/beer bottle trick. When we fired it up, the bottles started to glow purple.
We never got any streamers. At the toroid, we noticed some slight sparking between the magnet wire and the connection to to toroid. Out of curiosity, we place a florescent bulb on top of the toroid. The bulb glowed on our test....but still no streamers. Since the bulb glowed, I assume it was getting power to the toroid. But we let the thing run for at least 30 seconds and never saw lightening.
So we're stymied. Don't have a clue why we have no streamers. We had approx. 2mm on our spark gap.
Here's how it's built...
Primary coil - 15 turns using 1/4OD Copper tubing Secondary - 1500 turns using 24-gauge wire Magnet wire from secondary connect to toroid at the top Magnet wire from bottom of secondary goes to ground
Capacitors = 6 bottle filled with salt water, wrapped with aluminum foil all daisy-chained together with wire. One single wire on the daisy chain connects to the transformer The second wire on the transformer connects to an aluminum pan that makes a connection with those bottles where the aluminum makes contact with the aluminum pan.
Spark Gap - the spark gap doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. We pulled a second wire off the two posts from the transformer and the spark gap was not connected in-line with anything. This is how our plans show this is supposed to be done.
It sparked at the spark gap Bottle glowed purple florescent light lit up ....No streamers.
We have to be close. Doesn't that florescent light glowing suggest I'm getting power up there?
the toroid is made from a piece of semi-rigid aluminum duct attached to a 5-gallon paint buck lid to hold it's shape. We connected the toroid using an a plastic toilet flange connected to that 5-gallon bucket lid. The tolet flange fits right onto the 4" PVC pipe we used for the secondary coil.
Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.