Noob needs help w/ strobe light

Hey all,
I'm thinking of building this strobe light circuit: Adjustable Strobe Light

I'm very new to electronics and I have a couple questions.
1. What is the point of the neon bulb in the circuit(not the xenon flash bulb). Is it a ready light or something?
2.What component is Q1-106 SCR, what does that mean?
3.I was thinking of using this strobe tube, would that work?
4. Is it possible to make another light and sync the 2?

1. The neon bulb is part of a relaxation oscillator that triggers the strobe at intervals. When the capacitor charges up to a voltage where the neon bulb starts conducting, the capacitor discharges through the bulb and the SCR gate. The SCR turns on, triggering the strobe, the neon discharges the capacitor and turns off, and the cycle repeats.

2. The SCR is a device that turns on when a certain amount of current is applied to the gate, and then stays on until the voltage across the SCR drops below a certain threshold. It's like a latching switch.

3. That tube should work fine.

4. You'd have to modify the circuit to sync the strobes.

Use caution: strobe lights use HIGH voltages.

Thanks for the information. Do you think I can get all these at radioshack or do I need to order parts online?

Maybe 10 years ago you could get all the stuff at radioshack but not anymore.

You can probably get the flash tube, the diode and the fuse, and maybe the pot and resistors there, but the rest you'll have to get online.

I cant find a 250 ohm 10W resistor anywhere not even online. would wiring 2 100ohm + 50 ohm resistors each 10W in series work? If not, where can IO get the resistor i need?

EDIT: Never mind found them on ebay, but they're expensive is it cool to use a higher watt but same ohm resistor?

100 + 100 + 50 in series would work. But before you do that, check out mouser.com. Seems I found what you're looking for.

Yes, you can use a higher watt rated resistor. It'll be physically larger so it might not fit if you use the PCB template on the site you found the circuit on.

1. What specs SRC do I need and whats the diff between on stage voltage and trigger coltage and those things?
2. Does it matter what neon bulb I use? does that need a certain turn-on voltage?

Thanks for all your help

tykenfitz said:

2. Does it matter what neon bulb I use? does that need a certain turn-on voltage?

Click to expand...

I built a variable strobe about 15 years ago using a similar schematic.
Using a neon to trigger the SCR gave very poor performance, it would fail to fire the flash more times than it actually did work! So, bin the neon, and use a DIAC (bi directional trigger diode).. Something like a BR100 will do the job nicely, and they are very cheap too.