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Re: Rotary Spark gap and Tesla Magnifier System

Hi all,
        Richard, thanks for the reply and the information on your gap.

> Our series rotary gap can quench in the 50us range.  You mentioned
> your need for a 25us quench time for a K=.12 coupling.  Wow!  We
> used a 100us quench time on the old Nemesis two coil system at 13KW
> and coil coupling of k=.20. Needless to say it worked great.  I
> believe your requirements are caculated and not operationally 
> determined.

You are absolutely correct in that I have been unable to test both the
scoping and calculation under our standard powered conditions. I am
hoping to do this of course and there is a need to time it accurately.
I have heard that quenching should occur when the energy is bottled 
up in the secondary and that was my aim. I realise that quenching is 
also done to put out transformer fires in the gap with more moderate 
quench times and it does increase the power that the transformer is 
usefully delivering.
     My aim is to reduce primary gap conductions to the absolute min-
imum necessary to effect a one-off transfer to the secondary. You have
got me wondering whether the degree of jitter associated with this
approach might not be a problem given the rigid quench times required.
What do you think?

> The calculation comes from the old radio days of needing to not
> split the frequencies about resonance.  If you are trying to
> transmit power or intelligence, this is good, but a TC is not used
> for these purposes and need not answer quite so rigid a criterion.
> It is fine to splatter energy over a small range about resonance.
> The Q's of most operational resonators under sparking conditions is
> pretty abyssmal anyway.

Totally agree with this and I'm not at all worried about the energy
splatter. What I am aiming to do is minimize energy losses in the gap.
I have heard that a two coil system's performance can suffer when one
does this. Why do you think that might be?

Regards,
Malcolm