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Re: Leyden jar caps (Not shooting for anything gloriuous,but...)
> And about using salt water, there is a possibility that I don't remember
> seing discussed in this list, that is to use the water level for
> tuning, in the simplest way by changing the level of the water at the
> outer side of the bottles. A particularly convenient disposition
> could be to use two capacitors in series with the center grounded,
> in parallel with the power transformer and filter, having also in
> parallel the spark gap and the primary coil, both in series.
> The two capacitors would be bottles with salt water inside and
> outside, with the outside water common and grounded. A pump, or
> something simpler, as a bucket with water that is rised or lowered,
> connected to the water around the capacitors by a syphon tube,
> could be rather safely used for tuning, even with the system powered.
>
> Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz
Two weeks ago I would have told you that changing the capacitance is a bad
way to tune, because that would take the transformer/capacitor circuit out of
60 Hz resonance and decrease performance.
Now I'm not so sure about that reasoning because recent findings have
indicated better performance when the cap and transformer are NOT in 60 Hz
resonance. It's an interesting idea, but saltwater caps are unstable at
best, and saltwater itself is not the best conductor in the world, so I'd
advise you to build something a little more stable and tune with the primary
coil.
Playing the conservative,
Adam