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Small Coil Questions




I have a couple of questions about my new small coil.  Again, it is 3.0" dia
x 13.0" winding length - about 917 turns of #28 wire wound on acrylic form.
 Primary is flat, 14 turns of #10 solid copper wire.  Spark gap is the
standard cylindrical with 6 gaps of .028.  Power is one 12 kv 30 ma neon.

I am only getting about 11.0" of spark to a grounded wire.  Is this less than
it should be?

On the safety gaps, I have them set to .34" on each side with a grounded
contact in the center.  They fire very regularly at this distance.  I would
like to open them up some more so they only fire infrequently.  Am I likely
to damage the transformer?  I have a 3,000 ohm resistor and a 1 mh choke in
series with each H.V. lead from the transformer.  On my larger 6.0" coil
fired with a 14.4 kv pole pig, I have the safety gaps set at .50" on each
side and they seldom fire.

Another question is tuning and Q.  This is a very clean construction with all
acrylic materials, rolled poly cap, etc.  I expected the tune to be very
sharp but in actuality it doesn't seem to be.  The best tune is 13 turns,
which is about what I calculate.  Turn 13 is defintlely better than turn 12
or 14  but I can't really tell much difference between say turn 12.5 and
13.5.  Is this normal??  I have the same problem with the 6.0" dia coil.

Thanks,  Ed Sonderman