Re: First big magnifier run

To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Re: First big magnifier run
From: Bert Pool <nikki-at-fastlane-dot-net>
Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 05:51:02 -0600 (CST)
Subscriber: nikki-at-fastlane-dot-net Fri Feb 7 00:04:09 1997
At 10:25 PM 2/4/97 -0700, John Freau wrote:
><< monster snip 
>>What was absolutely incredible during this "conventional coil" attempt is
> >that we had some extremely hot, violent arcs from the toroid down to the
> >primary.  Sometimes, but not every time when this happened, we got 23 inch
>>flashovers from the bottom of the primary to the concrete driveway!  We have


[snip]
>
>Great preliminary results with that Maggy!  I can suggest two possibilities
>for why the spark missed the pipe.  1) the concrete is a bigger target, and
>the sparks and charged fields may not "see" the small pipe.  2) (and maybe
>more likely), TC sparks develop their length by the "growing" principle.
> Bylund had done some work with this using his solid state coil, and he found
>that certain conditions favor the production of sparks that do not "go for
>ground", but instead have a mind of their own, so to speak.  I think it was
>his conjecture that it's very different than a DC spark, in the sense that
>the voltage is much lower for the distance jumped than would be expected when
>compared with DC spark jumping distances.  
>
>When the spark is first formed, it is short and cannot  reach the pipe or
>ground or anything, therefore its direction of propagation is random.  From
>the tip of the spark, the spark then grows longer from the continuing power
>input to the system, but again, the added amount of spark is weak, too weak
>to reach any target, again its direction is random.  This random growing
>continues until the spark IS long enough to reach something, but what it
>reaches is random due to the gradual, incremental increase in the spark
>length.
>Comments welcomed.
> 
>Looking forward to full power results!
>
>John Freau
>

Nice reply John.  It wasn't that the spark grew in length, then had to
choose either my copper tubing ground or concrete, it had to literally arc
_around_ the grounded copper line to even reach the concrete!  It is obvious
the concrete was the preferred ground, it is a really massive counterpoise,
what with the rebar and all.  I am beginning to suspect also that the length
of the copper line must have had a lot to do with it as well - I am going to
change out the 3/8 line with 2 inch wide copper strap next run, and I am
going to bury a couple of ground rods as well.

Bert Pool
nikki-at-fastlane-dot-net