Amberley Teslathon 2000


Image courtesy of Alan Sharp
Venue : The Industrial Museum
Location : Amberley
Date : 1st May

Report by Steve Rodway...

___This Teslathon was planned as the ultimate high power record setting event. We were hoping that the lack of walls to limit us and the presence of a 63A 240V feed would lead to some large sparks, however it was not to be. Having previously run coils in the dark none of us had realized how little light the arcs actually emit, to the point where they are invisible against bright sunlight (in Britain...never!). This made coiling impossible until about 6pm, when the light had dropped enough to see the arcs.

Setting up of Alan Sharp and Mike Tucknott's coils.
Nick's secondary on its trolley in the foreground, and Nick's box trailer in the background.
Image courtesy of Alan Sharp
The assembled coils

___Once we started to run the coils up we were plagued by innumerable small bugs, Brian and Mike gave up on their coil after it refused to work at all, and Alan's put out a mere 6 feet (for one of it's better performances click here). By the time it was Nick's turn it was 11:00pm and everyone was getting a bit tired (some of us had been up since 5:00am). The coil was missing several important components anyway, so after a rather half hearted few tuning runs, we called it a night.

___Meanwhile, Inside the Seaboard Museum of Electricity, things were going rather better, Steve Crawshaw, Steve Bell, Steve Cook and Viv Watts were all running their coils, the display was almost non-stop, with Steve Cook's tiny coil being especially popular.