what is the best wire size to use?

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

Original poster: "Christopher Telford by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <christophertelford-at-yahoo-dot-com>

Hello All, 

Previously i was under the impression that the thicker
the wire the better for a secondary coil, as long as
you could get around 1000 turns on the coil form.
Recently, both my friend john and I made secondaries
on identical formers. He used 28swg wire, and i used
24. when no topload was being used, his performs
better than mine by around 5cm of arcing distance.
When used with topload my primary does not have enough
turns to get tunning for his coil, so i can't fairly
test the relative performance. The only differences
between the coils are that his is wound about 7 cm
longer than mine. Both are 110mm wide, and my coil is
around 55cm long, his being 62cm long. 
would i be better off winding a more numerously turned
primary and using 28swg wire when using these
dimmensions of secondary coil, or is the performance
increase of the 28swg wire coil over the 24swg coil
explained by the difference of wound length? I was
under the impression that the long thin design of
secondary coil was ineffecient, and that squatter
shaped ones performed better. 

Any thoughts on this would be welcomed, 

Chris Telford

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