did you used the chokes?
I was thinking about and i guess the chokes must be pulsed too... probably pretty much like the proposed vic by meyer...
I think i understood the function of the resistance at the secondary coil as if it where to cancel the electromagnetic field with the opposition to the field to let the chokes when revert polarity to apply the high voltage to the water thru the resistive secondary so the induced voltage in the secondary is nullified by the resistance and as the direction the chokes take to discharge is opposite the current is limited but the electric field should be there!
just a thought...
Did you used 50kv diodes?
did you tried with higher isolation? did you connected the secondary to circuit ground or just the plane?
I discovered about the potential the following:
Inside a hollow sphere the potential is constant it has the same potential as the sphere itself, however the electric field is zero!
From the potential and the isolated capacitance and dielectric proprieties of water is possible to determine 3 things... the Electric Field), the frequency and the current to get the Efields..
I tried an approximation for the cylindrical case but is particularly inappropriate because when ln(b/a) tends to infinity the capacitance drops to zero! not like the isolated sphere case where the capacitance tends to 4PiEoR
Anyways is still possible to estimate... and for my estimative the capacitance of a single cell goes from 100 to 500pf thats because the water has a 81k dielectric value.
what i mean is that if you charge a sphere in free space to 50kv you must add a given number of charges, if you simply drop this sphere in water you must add 81 times more charge for that same given potential to be achieved.
I was also putting everything together to star my tests but i realized i got no diodes ( i burned all in my reserves) i'm just missing that,,,