Originally completed in 1995

Arizona's First "Big Dog Coil"

Zotzilla

Zotzilla is a Good Old Fashioned Rotary Spark Gap Tesla Coil Fed from a 5 KVA Pole Transformer in a Specially Built Control Cabinet. We have measured point to point arcs 10 feet long with an input power of approximately 10 KVA. This Coil was Custom Built By J.O. and Dr. Hankenstein at J.O's Shop in Phoenix in the mid Nineties. It was most recently demo'd at the Arizona's Western Winter Teslathon in 2006, and at the Telluride Tech Festival in Telluride, Colorado in August of 2008.

Zotzilla goes to Telluride, Colorado

For the last eight years, since 2000, It has been a tradition in honor of Telluride's L.L. Nunn, George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla to demonstrate a Tesla Coil on Main Street in front of the Courthouse. This is in conjunction with the Telluride Tech Festival, which is a celebration of the past, present and future of technology. In 1891 Telluride was the first city in the world to have a commercial grade AC power plant, which was developed by Nikola Tesla. We were invited this year to participate in the event. We thought it would be appropriate to bring up Zotzilla and the "Wheel of Fire" for the demonstration. The old coil needed a little attention "below the deck" on the tank circuit. The spark gap and tank capacitor were originally tied together with flat braided cable. We decided to remove the old braided jumpers and replace them with copper buss.

Special thanks to Sarah Brown for her role in organizing the Telluride Tech Festival and Jason Grossman of Ridgway, Colorado for loaning us his F250 Ford Truck to get the Tesla Coil to the event. Telluride is NOT the place to bring a 40' Prevost and trailer due to it's mountainous terrain!

Be sure to check out the Youtube video clips of the event!

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