@Aaron
Your "secondary" is wound in the opposite direction than the power coil? What would that gain you? According to conventional theory you would just end up with the opposite polarity of the coil. To be honest I never tried it and maybe there something more about it that I don't know anything about?


Also, regarding the coils wound Bedini style I've noticed several things:

1. The mass of the copper wire is pretty much the same weight in the power and "secondary" sections. It seems to me that it goes according to Tesla's assertion that in order to transfer and/or gain some amount of radiant energy in any kind of resonant system one has to have the equal mass of conductive metal in primary and "secondary".
2. The bifilar or trifilar winding of coils should theoretically provide coils with the best capacitive coupling between them. Now, if we disregard the inductive (or to be more precise magnetic coupling) then what one is left with is capacitive coupling (which is related directly to dielectric field). Now, my guess is that with better capacitive coupling a better dielectric field between two coils is formed and thus one should get a better transfer of radiant energy. I'm wildly speculating here, of course.
3. The Litz wire has the less resistance to the fast transients or in this particular case the sudden impulses. It also shows less impedance at high frequencies which is precisely what one should expect from the extreme high frequencies radiant energy event. My guess is that all those factors explains for the greater amount or radiant energy produced (or rather captured) by these sort of wire. I did several measurements of the three different kind of coils- the one wound with ordinary round wire, the one wound with copper strip and the one wound with Litz wire. They were all used in the same switching setup, wound on the same type of core and they all had pretty much the same resistance and inductance (I dimensioned wire sizes accordingly). The Litz wire and copper strip showed pretty much similar radiant energy gain but the ordinary round profile wire coil showed a significantly weaker performance. So, the geometry and construction of the wire itself does make a difference. I also managed to acquire some aluminium wire but still haven't had opportunity to test it. My guess is that aluminium wire should outperform copper wire in the sense that aluminium itself proved itself to be a better medium for collecting static electricity (which is by nature damn near the dielectricity).



There is also one more thing that's bothering me regarding a usage of the diode bridge on the "secondary" coil. If you have measured power coil consumption with a current probe on a fast oscilloscope you could have noticed that the moment the power coil is turned on, the power consumption suddenly rises significantly while at the same time the discharge capacitor potential suddenly rises. That to me would indicate some kind of "transformer effect". I also did simultaneous measurement of the both power coil current and the "secondary" coil current and invariably when the capacitor is fully discharged (or rather when it has potential less than the potential of the power source being applied to the power coil) there is a noticeable current rise in the power coil as well as in the "secondary" coil prior to the power coil current cut-off and before the first radiant event occur. My interpretation of it is that prior to the first impulse of radiant energy the capacitor is being charged to the voltage level of the power source solely by the inductive coupling of the coils or rather by "transformer effect". It's easily preventable by simply using one diode instead of a diode bridge so that the inductive coupling of the coils doesn't play such a big role. I tested it and it indeed shows that a current consumption during the first pulse is reduced significantly and that the capacitor is almost not being charged prior to the occurence of the first radiant energy event. Now, my question is what is the rationale behind using the diode bridge in the first place? I mean there is a definite "ringing" of the potential of the "secondary" coil while it's energy being discharged into the capacitor that could be picked up by the diode bridge but is that the only reason for using the diode bridge in the first place? I mean it seems to me that it's simply the choice between picking up all of the energy available (diode bridge) and reducing the "transformer effect" (single diode).