Racing spark observations.

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Garry Freemyer by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <Garry-at-NDFC-dot-com>

Today, I had some more trouble with racing sparks. I find it difficult to
determine the cause of the racing sparks. From what I understand, the cause
can be any of the following three causes or a combination of the three ...

1. Mistuning. 

I've gotten some pretty good sparks, with racing sparks from mistuning and
I've gotten it in tune with the same size sparks but minus the racing
sparks. 

2. Too close coupling.

3. Too much output for the size of the secondary.

It seems that more often or not, by the time I figure out what is causing
the racing sparks, the secondary is ruined and this is if I am lucky, lately
they fry long before I get a chance to figure it out.

---

Well, this time I figured it out in time. It was too close of a coupling.

I figure maybe there is a pattern to the sparks that might tell us what the
problem might be.

With the too close coupling I seem to observe that the racing sparks are
long and start from the bottom winding and travel UP the secondary and
branch out at the end.

With poor tuning, the racing sparks seem to be shorter, and of different
lengths and there are multiple sparks.

I also note that if the windings are too few to a point, you get the racing
sparks, if they are too many, you just get weak output.

Has anyone else noticed a pattern to the sparks like this? What would a
spark look like if it were a result of too much voltage for the height of
the secondary?

I figure that if we can put together a pattern, and post it somewhere, it
might save some of us the grief of frying and torched secondaries.