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Glassless Saltwater Caps



[My Name is Dave Hartwick. This is my first e-mail to to the list. Hope
I've done this correctly.]

I'm coiling again after a 5 year hiatus, and there's something I've
wanted to report for a long time:

Before purchasing 2--.05ufd Condenser Products units, I exclusively used
salt water caps. But these caps utilized 4 gallon HDPE plastic
commercial food buckets (obtained at my wife's place of work) for the
dielectric, instead of glass containers, like the classic beer bottle
cap uses. HDPE dielectric massively outperforms glass in this
application, I should note. (HDPE = high density polyethylene, If I
remember correctly)
   Here's the punch line: Near the end of my last coiling efforts in 96,
I replaced a .025 ufd plastic saltwater bank with the 2 Condenser
Product units connected in series (for .025 ufd) in my 8", 5 kVA pole
pig driven, system. I expected a significant increase in performance,
but to my great surprise, I observed  VERY LITTLE DIFFERENCE at all!
That's right. Those plastic bucket saltwater jobs produced only slightly
less energetic sparks. Clearly not worth the $600.00 I paid for the CP
caps.
   Now, while this 8" system was finely tuned,  it probably was not
optimized. No rotary, but avery good airblast spark gap, for example. I
was obtaining 5-6 feet of discharge at around 5-6 kVA. I know this is
not very good in terms of inches/watt. Good magnifier systems clearly do
better. The point here is that it's entirely possible that the CP Caps
would distinctly outperform the plastic salt jobs in optimized
thoroughbreds. I don't know.
   Still, I thought the results I obtained were worth reporting.
   I believe Richard Quick is aware of my plastic salt caps, so this
info may already be out there somewhere. Also, I've got to think that
I'm not the only one who has tried other than glass dialectics in
saltwater capacitors.
Dave
[I invented the slinky toroid]