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And of course a huge thank you to Papplewick Pumping Station and their volunteers for lending us their steam hall, boiler room and coal shelter for the day.
Here is a few photos and videos, Ill post more as I get them.
Another great High Voltage meet at Papplewick Pumping station this year.
These are some photos and videos from the event.
Derek’s Coils and Stuff…
Extreme kits mini Wimshurst powers a ping pong accelerator
Large Wimshurst throws some sparks
Steve’s Tesla Coil
Roger’s VDG, Geissler tubes and Wimshurst
Van De Graaff with a charged ball
Alec’s Collection
Dave’s Coils
Andrew’s collection
Roberts stuff
3 phase Jacobs ladder
Gary’s Jacobs ladder & Flyback TC
Simon and Mark
Carl’s Tesla coil
Thanks to Andy B and Alex L for many of the above and Mark K for these below.
Please return Its likely I’ll get sent more pics and videos that I’ll post here. (email me tesla@extremelectronics.co.uk if you have a pic or video)
What a great day at Papplewick Pumping station. The change of venue caused some teething problems with space and I caused some problems with exhibitors names (no change there!) Over 140 visitors, three film crew’s on the day and 12 Exhibitors.
Danger, danger, high voltage! 🌩 pic.twitter.com/2FbIBQyc28
— BBC Radio Nottingham (@BBCNottingham) March 22, 2018
The pumping station were great in sorting out our rather strange needs and were over the moon about the attendance (they ran out of bacon in the cafe, apparently the indication of a good day). All proceeds from the day went directly to the Pumping station.
Photos from the day, If you, or your equipment is missing, please email me a picture/video. It was such a busy day I missed a lot of things.
Derek’s (my) Equipment
Sam’s Equipment
Tony/Leicester Hackspace
Alex’s Equipment
Dave’s Equipment
Jason’s Equipment
Roger’s Equipment
Chris’s Equipment
Chris’ Battery powered Tesla coil
Andrews Equipment
Earl
After a number of valiant attempts and a few disasters. Earl unfortunately failed to get his coil working. This was a great shame as the travel and effort he put in was huge. I would have loved to see his coil in action again. I especially wanted to see his bottle cap bank in action.
Robert’s Jacobs ladder
Groups
Papplewick Pumping station
A superb venue, although a bit cold, mitigated by a superb on site Cafe…
EE are actively looking for venues for teslathons in (Ideally, but not restricted to) the East Midlands for this or next year.
Places to hold our events are getting few and far between, mostly because of our “special” requirements.
What is a teslathon : A tesalthon is a meeting of tesla coil enthusiasts. Our tesla coils vary in size from tabletop to 3M tall and are all built by amateurs.
I have been running teslathons for 23 years all over the UK and have Risk assessments and method statements to cover the H&S aspects to our hobby.
So what do we need?
The Must have’s
A room with tables a minimum of 11M x 8M in size, on the ground floor that can be blacked out and a ceiling height of ideally more than 4M. Bigger of course is better. We usually have 20 or so coilers and 30-60 visitors to the events.
Plenty of 13A sockets (for our bigger events, a 32A Commando or accessible cooker socket would be needed, or an electrician on site to give support.)
Some method of providing a separate electrical earth. 10 or more tables.
Tea and coffee making facilities or a cafe is vital 🙂
Other needs (can generally be worked around)
The room needs a minimum (ideally none) of Burglar alarm, Fire alarm or network cables. Electronic lighting can be OK, but they must be high the ceiling. Fire sensors are generally OK, but they must not be of the ionisation type.
Ideal Venues are usually industrial museums or metal skinned warehouses/barns as these have a minimum of electronic equipment. We would like to work with the venues own insurance if possible, but we can provide our own if needed.
I also arrange workshops and talks with lesser requirements, so most venues can be used for something.
We can work in two ways, either a daily rental for the hall, paid by us,or we can work as a ticketed event to raise funds or awareness for a museum, venue or charity.
Before any booking, I would need to assess the venue for safety and suitability.
Have a suitable venue? (Or would like a talk at your venue) contact me tesla@extremeeectronics.co.uk
Details of past events are here http://www.extremeelectronics.co.uk/nottingham-gaussfest/ and http://www.extremeelectronics.co.uk/cambridge-teslathon/
One of the most popular Gaussfest that I’ve run. Loads of exhibitors and even more HV kit and packed with visitors. A great day, thanks to everyone that attended.
My coils
Jason’s Coil
Dave’s Coils
Alex’s Coils
Robert’s coil
Chris’s Coil
Steve’s Coils
Phillip’s toploads and ring flipper
Tony (Leicester Hack space) Wimshurst and jacob’s ladder
Coil brought to test and get running
General Gaussfest photos.
Video from Chris
My Coils, static machines and Twin PiZero TeslaCoils
An amazing day, all my coils and static machines worked from beginning to end with no issues. The VDG performed well after a hail storm had knocked out all of the moisture from the air. It made a huge difference. I did however have a failure the night before the Gaussfest (therefore it cant count as a failure AT the Gaussfest) where I shared the earth from my VDG with the PiZero coils. A strong discharge killed the i2c on my Pi Zero. A swap of PiZeros, a number of downloads and a recompile got me back working in a hour or so. Glad I’d gone with the PIZero saved me £21 over a full Pi Failure.
Roger’s VDG
Roger was new to the Gaussfest and brought his commercial VDG, a very nice unit with LOADS of accessories. It ran fairly well during the day after he replaced the original 15year old+ belt. I suspect he suffered with the damp as well, but it didn’t affect his VDG as much as mine, I put this down to a lack leakage from his very smooth top terminal. (The VDG’s not his).
Steve’s coils
Steve brought a couple of coils and a VDG (sorry no photo) . His desktop Static gap coil was a good solid performer, but his VTTC was just a work of art. It performed well with those lovely straight arcs characteristic of VTTC’s. He vows to return to Cambridge, can’t wait.
Jason’s Coil
Jason’s coil ran very well, until he had a capacitor failure, which was a great shame, but hopefully easy to rectify.
Daves coil
Dave’s coil ran well as usual. Superb looking and a very reliable performer. I know Dave has plans for an upgrade, so look forward to the MkII
Phil & Phil’s coils
Slow motion (90fps capture)
Phil and Phils coils (now share so many parts I can’t tell them apart, I’m not sure their owners can either). Both coils ran very well giving 8-10′ arcs to the floor,ceiling and occasionally to a target earth. PhilS did have a problem with a stray topload cable that caused a secondary strike
It didn’t appear to have done much damage, but only a strip down will tell.
Thanks to everyone that came and especially those who brought “stuff” to demonstrate. After talking to a couple of non-UK visitors they are very envious of our Teslathons, there are very few across the world, and the UK has two!
See you all at the next Gaussfest or at Cambridge.
Other Photos / links from the event.
Steve Lane
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/+SteveLane/albums/6258914846725227377
Pictures from the Nottingham Gaussfest 2015
My Coils and HV Stuff
Phillip S’s Tesla coil
Phillip T’s Tesla coil
And one of Phil’s own videos at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR1MEOXsKgw
Dave B’s Tesla coil
Gordie’s Tesla coil
Mark’s Tesla Coil