I have been busily working on a High Voltage Power source and successfully completed it.  This was necessary for both projects.

The HV source takes 120 Volts and scales it up to 25,000 volts.  It is pretty cool and creates a lot of purple lightning bolts.

I have completed and tested my second lifter.  The size of lifter I am building (60mm) has a nominal lift capacity of 3g.  This can be incresed several ways but because I am unfamiliar with the most basic design I will not try any advanced designs.

Unfortunately my second lifter is 3g over weight so obviously it did not lift.  I weighed the various components and found them to weigh

foil 1.23g
balsa 1.9g
Cu 1.2g
glue 2g

I continue to have problems with overglueing.  To cut down on weight I will use 50 gauge wire which I hope reduces Cu to .6g. i will cut balsa struts and horizontal struts in half reducing these to .85 g.  I will not reuse old struts which lent extra glue from the first prototype.  I will also use far less glue, I hope this reduces glue used to .5 - .8g.  The foil will most likely continue to weigh 1.23g unfortunately.  These amounts give me 3.48g.  I hope to shave off extra balsa wood on the vertical struts after finding the optimal height between the corona wire and tinfoil.  My other option is removing tinfoil at this point.  Maybe I can also use less glue i don't know.

Tesla

I have put the tesla project on hold as I have tried doing a literature search trying to divine the true nature of the device I am building.  This is taking time as the "literature" that is most informative seems to be in various forum posts.  It is also posted by persons of dubious intent. For example the most informative thread (which contains 2000 messages) is by a guy named Lawrence rayburn who claims to have developed an antenna that collects energy fluctuations occuring betweent the ionosphere and the earth.  In 2003 he claimed he was building a device for the masses but in his posts (I am 500 in at 2005) he switches to saying he will be telling no one exactly how to build one (although he gives hints) he will be sending no pictures diagrams schematics etc. to anyone.  I am reading along to see if any of the people on the forum successfully duplicated this guys claims but it is taking a looong time.

We have successfully gotten ~.002 volts sustained out of the ground.  We believe by treating the wire with the electret effect  we can increase this to 2 volts sustained with increased amperage unknown.  The successful completion of the HV output will greatly help.  

While 2 volts may not sound like a lot keep in mind that the voltaic cells in a 18 volt NiCd battery are only 1volt and they can do quite a bit so this is not without use I hope.  And it is always possible to meke more that 2 volts with proper understanding of the underlying principles (which I lack).