ACRs, corona, and strike rings

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

Original poster: Brett Miller <brmtesla2-at-yahoo-dot-com> 

Ian,

--- Tesla list <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com> wrote:
 > Original poster: "Ian McLean"
 > <ianmm-at-optusnet-dot-com.au>
 >
 > Brett,
 >
 >  > Maybe so.  However, I didn't get any corona or
 >  > "sparkles" on mine.  Although most of the time I
 > have
 >  > run it as an ACR, and not a main toroid, so I
 > would
 >  > guess that the presence of the upper toroid
 > sheilds
 >  > the ACR from the tendancy to produce corona.
 >  >
 >
 > I haven't noticed any corona yet myself either.  It
 > just seems like common
 > practice on coils from medium to large size to
 > include the ACR.  I have also
 > noticed on Claude's coil that having a larger toroid
 > on top of a smaller
 > toroid tends to direct the streamers out more
 > horizontally, reducing ground
 > rail strikes and generally improving the look of the
 > streamer output.

Yeah.  I'll say.  I don't even use a ground rail, plus
I've used a 30 degree inverted conical for about 5
years without a single primary strike.  I will
probably always use the 2 toroid system for my
disruptive coils and no strike ring/ground rail.

 >
 > The "crackles/sparkles" all over my temporary toroid
 > are from (from what I
 > have been told here) the aluminium foil covering -

Yeah, that's corona.  All the energy going into those
"crackles" is loss and subtracts from your streamer
energy.  In the early days of my coil I didn't even
have an ACR, but I fired up anyway.  I set a 6"
diameter spun aluminum Van de Graff sphere on top of
the secondary and inserted the top wire into it.  When
the coil ran there was copious 14 inch streamers and a
huge 2 foot halo of purple hairy corona extending in
368 degrees off of the top windings of the secondary
up to the bottom of the sphere.  Quite beautiful
actually.  Maybe sometime I will set up like that
again and take a picture with infrared mode enabled on
the digital8 cam.

-Brett




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