Arizona Teslathon in January

Above, John Dyer of California, a very capable high voltage tinkerer.

Of all the Underground Technology events -- robot fights, rocket launches, catapult hurls, human powered vehicle races, and so on -- perhaps my favorite is the Teslathon.

A Teslathon is a gathering of high voltage enthusiasts who display the great electrical devices they've made in their workshops. The king of the show is a machine called a Tesla Coil, a great lightning maker that shoots arcs and sparks across rooms. There's other stuff as well like Jacobs Ladders, Marx Coils, and Van de Graaf generators, all of which are incredibly fascinating to watch.

Teslathons are typically not big public events. Mostly they are attended only by members of the HV community. But, if you hear about one and get permission to attend, it's pretty darn cool.

I see from the pupman.com mailing list (the online center for this hobby) there's one planned in Arizona on January 16. I'd like to try and go myself. I have a crummy little jacob's ladder, but I'm starting to think about actually winding the coils for the Tesla Coil I designed a couple years back.