This diagram I drew to show that the holes punched into each plate are exactly the same in every plate, at exactly the same distances from eachother, and parallel to eachother.  The smaller of the two is a channel for a conductor to be placed which, connects all of conductive plates.  This device is designed to utilize stray capacitance, there are no positive plates, and there is no need for positive plates.  Earth Ground is close enough even through all of the plastic and/or glass, or whatever insulating material you are using.  The smaller the value of capacitance, the smaller the difference in charge time from one plate to the next.  The second hole remains vacant, this is where a cloud of electrons will rest to present the potential difference which will be accellerated.  Although, Newton's Law states that Matter cannot travel faster than light, a voltage is independent of the electrons themselves, and is a field which is independent.  Unless, you fully understand transformer theory, you probably wouldn't know how separate a voltage is from it's current.  When you step up a voltage using a transformer, the current is divided by the same factor that multiplied the voltage.  At a certain point you would have a detectable voltage if it were high enough, and this device is intended to operate at or above 40 Kilovolts.  This is for the sake of trying to receive a signal in the past in millivolts, microvolts, nanovolts, and or, picovolts.  This isn't a significant once frequency has been resolved.  I wouldn't crank up the gain before I new this thing was running for a couple of days but, I know that if I were looking for a 40KHz signal Monday, and Tuesday was changing over to 45KHz, the receiver rate should be no different than the transmission rate.