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Re: Why does top capacitance work? (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 21:29:07 -0800
From: Bert Hickman <bert.hickman-at-aquila-dot-com>
To: Tesla List <mod1-at-poodle.pupman-dot-com>
Subject: Re: Why does top capacitance work? (fwd)
Tesla List wrote:
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 22:18:52 -0700
> From: Tesla List <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
> To: testla-at-pupman-dot-com
> Subject: Re: Why does top capacitance work?
>
> Subscriber: MALCOLM-at-directorate.wnp.ac.nz Wed Feb 19 22:06:39 1997
> Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 08:44:07 +1200
> From: Malcolm Watts <MALCOLM-at-directorate.wnp.ac.nz>
> To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
> Subject: Re: Why does top capacitance work?
>
> This post has rekindled a thread from awhile back.....
>
<SNIP>
> >
> > Certainly your last point is true, although Wysock and Cox's coils tend
> > to have BIG tank caps, small primary inductance and small top
> > dischargers -- Adding tank capacitance alone seems to be sufficient for
> > BIG streamers on larger coils.
> >
> > Looks like there are still lots of mysteries to be solved! BTW, what do
> > you do for a living that lets you play with these nice toys?? :^)
> >
> > -- Bert --
>
> This is something that I am hoping to investigate. It is not true
> that all systems will benefit from extra capacitance in the primary
> system. One very experienced coiler reported that increasing his Cp
> from 0.1uF to 0.2uF resulted only in burning up the gap faster with
> no extra output length (power went from 25kW to 50kW). Others have
> also noted this effect. The question then is: why does doing this
> benefit some systems and not others? I earlier suggested that this
> might well be a function of the secondary characteristics and that
> there is an ideal primary configuration for a particular secondary. I
> will be looking for evidence of this in the coil design notes kindly
> sent to me by some list members.
>
> Malcolm
Malcolm,
This situation is particularly intriguing! All things being the same,
the primary "bang" size should have doubled. In this system, do you know
whether the secondary/toroid was changed to operate at a lower
frequency, the primary inductance halved to keep the same Fo, or some
combination? Either the additional primary energy didn't make it to the
secondary in the first place (higher gap losses, loss of primary-ballast
balance with the larger size tank cap), or the gap no longer quenched as
well and more of the secondary's energy came back and helped burn up the
gap, or...something else!? VERY interesting for sure!
Do you have any more specifics on these systems?
-- Bert H --