Minnie is getting tougher these days, so don't underestimate that cute mouse!

The voltage up there is very high but the current is  piss weak. That's where their patented collector comes into play.  As I mentioned, I cant give away any secrets on how to get massive currents, but here are some no BS tips that my colleagues allow me to give you.

When you start out, use a small capacitor , say 0.01uF rated at 8Kv or more.  You then attach  some sort of quality spark gap between the cap terminals as a visual aid, perhaps a 2-5kV one.  One end of the cap is grounded, the other goes to a fine copper wire slightly wrapped around the cotton string that goes up to Minnie.  The copper wire goes all the way up to Minnie and is connected to your ion collector.  Your hands must be well isolated with rubber gloves etc because any leaks through your body will not allow the cap to charge.

Dont touch the copper wire and don't touch the cotton string either. Use a good plastic reel that insulates your hand from the string . If all goes well you will see sparks. Dont use diodes as yet and don't try to measure the voltage with your multimeter. Go as high as possible with Minnie.

Work hard in the workshop on the detector ,to get charge on the cap, dont use diodes at this point unless you want to collect radio signals or power line radiation.
Most importantly, .....


Dont be tempted to spray Minnie with graphite, unless you want an Angry Mickey on steroids at your door.

As a simplest ready available solution, to use thoriated rods
like there
http://www.twi-global.com/technical-knowledge/faqs/health-and-safety-faqs/faq-the-use-of-thoriated-tungsten-electrodes/

Of course not.
But a neon is a better idea instead of spark gap as the Minnie generator is your first attempt. The sub 100V discharge is a good indicator. Just remember to use  low leakage caps, no electrolytics, the lower the farads the better, so long as you can see the glow discharge during the day!

(Ion)Wind Converter
https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?DB=EPODOC&II=14&ND=3&adjacent=true&locale=en_EP&FT=D&date=19880218&CC=DE&NR=3627532A1&KC=A1#


And Cherryman, reply 30 related: Otto Traun/Plauson worked also in optimizing the Tesla electric motor performance .
https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?DB=EPODOC&II=39&ND=3&adjacent=true&locale=en_EP&FT=D&date=19220710&CC=GB&NR=157262A&KC=A#

some others used this reference:
https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?DB=EPODOC&II=7&ND=3&adjacent=true&locale=en_EP&FT=D&date=20101004&CC=PT&NR=104492A&KC=A#
https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?DB=EPODOC&II=8&ND=3&adjacent=true&locale=en_EP&FT=D&date=20101004&CC=PT&NR=104491A&KC=A#

technical result: a(n) 18000 RPM motor (so there would be the need for a gear for conventional use )

I have tried this many years ago, but with NO success.

The Plauson method and Tesla's method work very differently. The Tesla device collects the charge of charged particles from cosmic rays penetrating the atmosphere. The insulation on the polished, elevated plate serves 2 purposes. The first is that it covers any points that ionize the air and attract lightning. The second is that it is a dielectric material and serves to separate the charges and protect the the charge collected by the plate from neutralizing with opposite charges in the air around it. So the insulation should have as high a dielectric constant as possible. All connections and conductors between the elevated plate and your device need to be insulated for the same reason. The same goes for all connections and conductors between your device and your ground rod/plate connection. I found that insulating the top 3 feet of the ground rod or wire going to the plate in the soil also helps because the charged particles will also penetrate the ground to that depth.

The reason Tesla says in his patent to use a "highly polished or amalgamated plate" is so the dielectric insulation will make the best contact possible and therefore attain the best charge transfer.

In metallurgy, amalgamated means mixed with mercury. Mercury has some interesting properties in regard to Tesla's work. Vacuum tubes were developed at one time to use a pool of mercury to conduct high voltage, high current electricity in only one direction - a vacuum diode, if you will - that could handle 30kW of DC power. Tesla also used mercury in many of his circuit controllers for the same reason. Search "mercury arc rectifiers" for more info.[/font]

If I remember correctly, John Bedini said to use thoriated tungsten welding rods for the cores of the coils in the SSG.

There were at one time vacuum tubes produced that used a radioactive material. I think it was RCA who produced them for use in high power radio transmitters. There might still be a few around but they would cost an arm and a leg I imagine.

Page 13 of the following PDF document shows, essentially, a Tesla radiant energy collector using strontium rather than cosmic rays.
http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~blanchar/res/BlanchardKorea.pdf[/url]

[/font]You can buy thorium on eBay I think. And the following site has radioactive materials and handling equipment: http://www.unitednuclear.com/

More info in the attachment.

Don't laminate it unless you are a Drongo!

If you laminate it then you might as well use alum foil!  And then you limit yourself to capturing AC fields only.  You ain't ever gonna see those sparks like on the Ion group vids.    what happened to the Minne experiment?? Oh sorry for taking the Mickey out of you. Oh man I need to stop..