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Re: Cold Weather Performance...
Bert,
I have noticed that of which you speak....
> Has anyone else noticed any significant performance improvement
> with colder weather on Tesla Coils? I know VDG's love winter. My 10"
> coil is in an unheated porch, and temperatures are now getting into the
> 20's and 30's in the evening. I've noticed that my coil now seems to run
> significantly better now than during warmer weather (better breakout,
> longer and louder streamers...).
>
> I suspect part of it has to do with the air being dryer, and the maybe
> the PVC form is less "leaky". The gaps also seem to be firing at a
> higher voltage now, so maybe this is part of it. I also had to tweak my
> tuning a bit, so I think my homemade caps drifted a little.
>
> Asking those with experience, does this mean it'll work _really_ well at
> -25 degrees?? Hmm.. maybe I need to move to a more northerly
> climate!...! :^)
I don't yet know whether this is the result of drier air (= drier
coil, less water molecules floating round) or perhaps higher
atmospheric pressure? I have rigged up an e.s. voltmeter in a room
here to monitor the air moisture. You can walk across the carpet and
send the thing off the scale on a dry day. Inceidentally, this was
an object lesson to the computer service group here. My coil performs
far better when the air is dry but I have not correlated this with
air pressure as such, although dry air here does usually correspond
with higher pressures (anticyclone in this part of the world). I no
longer bother to fire the coil on damp days. I set the meter up to
monitor what was going on in the copy room as people constantly
complained of getting severely zapped from touching the metal bench
in the room on some days.
Zap (ouch!),
Malcolm