[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Spark length programs, was update: New webPage, torrid and



Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <FutureT-at-aol-dot-com>


Alex, programmers, all,

Well, you're using a matched or resonant sized cap, so if
your spark gap is set narrow, this will limit your output.
If you set the spark gap (and safety gap) wide, this may
destroy the NST.  By using an LTR value cap, of about
.02uF, you can get more power throughput with a given
spark gap width.  Your coil has good overall specs.  

It would be interesting sometime to do some tests of such
a coil with various gap spacings, for both matched and LTR
caps, and make up a chart.  This way, the output spark
length could be predicted based on the gap spacing.
I suppose roughly speaking, the output spark length may
double as the gap spacing is doubled for a given setup.
It would be super-easy for someone to make up such a
chart.  This chart could be posted somewhere at a website,
and folks could look at it and know what spark length to
expect based on their gap spacing.  It would get tricky
because a different chart would be needed for different
NSTs.   If the relationship is
sort of linear (which I suspect it is), then a chart is not so 
important.  A more interesting idea (hint- hint) would be
for someone to incorporate such a parameter into their
computer program.  The computer would figure out if the
cap is LTR or matched from the entered data, the program
would also ask for the spark gap spacing.  The program
output would predict the spark length based in part on this
gap spacing.  For very small caps (smaller than matched),
the program would take this into account also.  The 
behaviour would be different in this case because the
break rate will change more (I think) as the spark gap width
is made wider or narrower.  The computer calcs would need
to rely on empirical data.

I've never made tests or comparisons as above because I've
been interested in getting the longest possible sparks, rather
than in deliberately degrading the performance.  But from a
reliability standpoint, where one wishes to run the coil for
long runs, or in a commercial application, where reliability
is more important than spark length, such info could be 
useful, from a spark length prediction point of view.

John Freau