I was wondering about the superpole diagrams that Aaron drew too. I have sandwitched two magnets together but I had both norths facing out towards the coil, essentially making a bigger magnet I guess. Id be interested to see if the diagram Aaron drew does work. One interesting rotor I made was the shape of a swastika (no ties to the Nazis here, it is acutally an ancient symbol that we unfortunately associate purely with Hitler). The ends of the "fan" were a whole magnet where the north was at the front and the south at the tip. The north would be attracted to the coil and cause it to fire repelling it and drawing the south towards the coil at the same time. I never measured any charging results as this was a mechanical switching, But it rotated excellently and I was always interested to see if there was any benefit of having the poles move sideways across the coil.

One other question regarding ground rods. I have seen diagrams where the ground rod is used but normally it is positioned on the negative, i.e between emitter and negative of run battery. Is this the correct place? I was a little confused by Aarons post, it seemed to indicate that the ground rod was placed between the diode off collector and the charge + terminal.