Greetings. I have been working on a small tesla coil based around a 10KV 30ma neon xformer.
I've built the spark gap, tested, works. I've built a 12 pack of bottle capacitors, measured 8nF. All seemed well until I tried to hook up the spark gap and the capacitor. W/ the spark gap alone, it throws sparks just fine... but as soon as I introduce the capacitor in either series, or parallel... it stops the spark gap from firing until I turn off the supply and turn it back on. But if the capacitor is hooked to it... nada.
Could this be a protection in the neon transformer that shuts off w/ overload? Shunt? I'm not real certain what to do at this point, as I've spent weeks searching google for everything I could find prior to building this thing, and now I'm beyond frustrated.
Any help is much appreciated. Thanks
Jim KC9FFX
(cross posted to sci.electronics)