Re: Power vs. spark length was, Voltage determination

[FutureT-at-aol-dot-com (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>)]

In a message dated 7/24/00 11:21:53 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
tesla-at-pupman-dot-com writes:

> Original poster: Rscopper-at-aol-dot-com 
>  
>  I just rebuilt my gaps to handle the new pig, and fired it up Saturday
>  evening.  Going from approx 4KW to 8.5KW only gave me about 1 foot in extra
>  spark length.

R.

I assume this uses a rotary gap?  In any case the extra power is not
being utilized to best advantage.  If it's a static gap, the break-rate may
be going really high, and may need a wider gap setting for best results. 
If it's a rotary, is it variable speed?
>  
>  Some interesting observations:  
>  
>  1) Before, when the arc hit a ground target, all other spark from the top
>  would stop, Now, there are still streamers coming from other sides of the
>  toroid even when one is hitting a target.

This makes sense because for a given power input, a smaller toroid
will give more streamers.  Now that you've increased the power the
toroid is effectively smaller.
>  
>  2)There is corona coming from everywhere!  between my stacked secondaries,
>  and around the output arc itself.  Maybe I've reached the maximum power my
>  secondaries can handle, and any extra power is wasted in corona.  I'm going
>  to build a new larger toroid this week to see if it helps.

The larger toroid should help a lot.

Cheers,
John Freau

>  
>  In the end I had 2 stacked 8-inch secondaries wound with 23 AWG with a
>  total inductance of 125mh, and the whole thing was about 9 feet tall
>  including toroid.
>  
>  R. Scott Coppersmith