LTR causes arcing to primary?

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Brett Error by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <bretterror-at-hotmail-dot-com>

I recently built a tesla coil that worked BEAUTIFULLY.  However, I built it 
with a capacitance on the primary tank that was almost exactly resonant.  
Although the coil worked beautifully, it was short lived.  After less than 
10 minutes of run time, the caps burst into flame.

The coil is about 4.5 inches outer diameter, and about 21 inches of wind 
length.  Because the coil is relatively long and skinny, I did not believe I 
would need to add a strike rail to the coil.  And previously when I ran the 
coil, it worked beautifully until the capacitors failed.

I just completed my LTR cap (about 1.5 X resonance) and plugged it into the 
coil.  I get streamers, but the secondary coil also arcs occasionally down 
its length just a couple of centimeters from the surface of the coil.  I 
don't think it is arcing to the primary coil, because the discharge is so 
close to the surface of the secondary coil.  I'm not sure exactly what is 
going on and I don't want to run it too much to investigate because I don't 
want to risk a failure.

Any idea what might be causing this if all I've changed was the capacitor?  
Is it likely arcing to the primary coil or is something else likely going 
on?  Would a strike rail help this problem?

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

Brett

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