Wow That is great!!!!! Arjay Thanks Col for those ideas. I was very lucky. After lunch a mate called and when I told him about my hassle, he said there was an old abandon car in the bush near his house. Slipped over there and got a condenser, a few spare relays (that only one was suitable, it needs an 87a "Normally closed terminal") and the centre seat belt out of the back seat for a land yacht. Rang the shire ranger and arranged to have it crushed, as the mobile car crusher is in town. So a good result. I followed this link and made up a buzz coil and it works a treat. http://www.oldengine.org/members/kerogas/bozzcoil/ Throws a non-stop spark about 25mm, from the spark plug electrode to an earth. Brilliant !!!!!! Here's one sure way to rig up a quick and easy spark coil to run old engine ignitions, keep dogs out of your trash or test the strength of one's continence. The best part is that it is made of ordinary junk car fodder - namely a coil and condenser (preferably one with internal resistor) and a NO/NC Bosch relay found in clusters under late model car hoods! (If you like, you can add a 0.5 to 1 mfd capacitor in series with a 500 to 1000 ohm resistor across the breaking points of the relay (30 & 87a) and they will last much longer). Just got to make a box to house the ignition, as it tends to bite a bit if not handled carefully. Onwards on upwards!!!!

This: is a very good idea, otherwise you get big sparks across the terminals of the relay inside the housing, which you can't see, and destroys the contacts pretty quickly.

Heya Chook, Geez it's been a while since I've dealt with this sort of stuff, had to go into the shed to double check one of my caps! Arrow should point to the negative terminal, ie, terminal 30 on your diagram. You might notice that the buzzing slows down a bit when you connect the cap and resistor, this is normal, the amount depends on the sizes of the resistor and cap. It might not be enough to notice. Also make sure that your cap is at least a 16V capacitor.

We have ignition !!!!!! Well spark anyway. Your a champ, Nebbian. It stopped the fireworks inside of the relay Nice blue arc from the end of the plug. The white control box (that I'll mount the components in) is from the old CSBP fertilizer works, that was pulled down years ago. Now onto building the test bench. I nicked a broken desk from school to give me a head start.

I reckon the ultimate in cool would be a kauffman starter for the pulsejet, pity it would probably be too hard to do though-there are a few technical hurdles in the way with it being a bit different to a piston or turbine engine. Buzz coil is much more practical for the job, (I just like the idea of starting a jet with a shotgun shell) stephen

kauffman (not sure if I spelt it right) starters were common on a lot of old tractors, also on aircraft engines, radials and V types. Our canberra bombers had kauffman starting for thier turbines- not sure how it worked on them though. The original "Flight of the Pheonix" movie gave a good demonstration of the system on a radial. Years ago, I knew a bloke with an antique tractor- cant remember the make, part of the starting procedure was lighting a fire under the engine! stephen

It lives. Geeez.............. The dogs have just stopped barking and the test run was 2 hours ago. My hens won't lay for weeks and all my neighbours turned up within 30 seconds of it firing. A mate rang me to say he heard it above his TV, from 2 and a 1/2 kilometres away. To say I'm happy is an understatement. This is 20 seconds into its very first run. Actually it was after my son landed again, after it fired and scarred the hell out of him. Not what he expected. I had talked it down to get him to film it with my phone. It is pretty hungry and requires a LOT of gas. Had to remove the regulator from the cylinder and the tap is set at about 2 turns on, when it's running. It stopped after about 2 minutes as the gas line had iced up. I fired it up for a second time as no one was going home till they had seen it run. Just need a good video now, as my phone has trouble handling the jets frequency. The tailpipe is pretty close to the right length. I'll cut just 3mm off it, before its next run. I need to sort out a better way of controlling the gas flow. The tap on the bottle is a bit coarse on its adjustment. When it flames out with a rich mixture and reignites it make the ground shake. Ahhh. I'm over the moon.

Geeeeeezzz, Chook, youve' started something there..... Red hot , throbbing, not bad for an Oldie..........

Well got home from being called into work. I went to go over to the shed. I reckon our dog would have bitten me, had I gone any closer. The Jet and the wife have now cooled down and the neighbourhood is slowly returning to normal. I can't work out how to convert the vid off the phone to here. So I will get a video camera and post it ASAP, guys. Don't hold your breath though. Not sure about the thrust, but a 2 mtr blue flame out the back and a small 200mm one out the inlet. Pokes out some heat.

youd better start saving your coin for THE DECIBEL TAX

Yeh Wayne.. I wouldn't have that hassle of my wife in my ear either. I've got one of those old diesel upright "woofer heaters" (that burn on the surface of the fuel in the 20 ltr bottom tank), in the shed. It's not even close to being in the same heating league, as the jet. My laser temperature gun, just topped out at "800 degrees C and read, ERROR" very early on in the test run. I used 1.55 mm galv sheet to make the 2 cones and end cap for the spark plug. It flaked all the galv off them on the first run and melted the nylon inserts out of all the nyloc nuts holding it down..

starting engines in the winter, had a demo one day with a diesel fergy that was to say the least tempremental.....no spray in additive, bloke took off his wollen sock and placed it over the air intake.....cranked up nicely, one to remember. edit ...in need of a bigger spark? use a button, cut spark plug lead and wire dizzy end to two button holes on one side. with spark plug end wire to other two holes spark will jump gap and increase in size and power as it does...can help .

" THAT ROCKET "......well really, that rocket has ceased to be and modifications will make it " THIS ROCKET " ...sometimes management just doe's not understand and because of changes in life has a cloudy concept Now this thread is being watched by many MEN world wide already there are contingency plans afoot I have it from a reliable sourse that Lake Lefroy, could be the centre of the universe later this year Virgin Galatic is a word i hear. This could be the start of something big...REAL BIG.....

Yr packed bag will b on the doorstep if u even think about firing up that rocket. The management!! Of course you did not acknowledge that you received the text

Got bored again!!!!! Should have 55 Lbs of thrust this time. It's a 180o "Lockwood" Pulsejet. The sheet the angle grinder is laying on will be the tail pipe cone.