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Status, etc.

Greetings,

First,

>>> 
 > Well, I'll try opening up the gaps first.  By the way, Is 
 > it the same if I add more pipes to the parallel gap?  

Parallel gaps, no. Series gaps, yes.

<<<
Oops.  I wasn't clear.  I meant a series of gaps made with pieces of pipe
laid parallel. (||||||)

Second,

Well, I opened up the gaps a bit.  What a difference!  Now from my 12x3 toroid
I am getting 24" discharges.  This is amazing (to me).  I know the length
because I had a piece of 1/2" Cu pipe at an angle towards the toroid.
   / <-- 24" --> o===o
  /                |

The sparks would just barely reach. In other words, the streamers would 
zap around and then occasionally make contact  with the pipe.

Next I tried the 22x7 toroid.  I turned up the power and noticed that there
was a streamer breaking free (and heading toward me, which was troubling).
As I turned up the power some more, the saftey gaps started firing.  At this
point I decided that I should stop before the smoke gets out.  

Some observations:  I had my power supply connected across the cap instead
of across the gap, which is kind of a no-no.  I was unable to spend much 
time (> 10 min) on the thing at all so I didn't get to rearrange the 
circuit and see what happened.  I believe that there would be less kickback 
sparking if I connected across the spark gaps.  Correct me if I am wrong or
misguided, but I think that the kickback may be occurring when my coil is 
ever so slightly out of tune so that when my power supply is trying to charge
the caps when they have been charged in reverse.  This effectively puts the
cap and power supply in series and doubles the voltage, causing the safety 
gaps to fire.

Status:
Spent Sunday's free time modularizing the components of my system and putting
the new variac in a box.  I also finished an air blast gap.  Sometime soon
(this week) I'll try the air blast gap and the better circuit configuration.


Chip