Re: kinds of spark

["Gomez ADDams" <gomez-at-netherworld-dot-com> (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>)]

on that fateful day 7/26/00 12:29 PM, Tesla list uttered:

> Original poster: "Richard Barton" <richardbarton-at-caving5.freeserve.co.uk>
> 
> but every 20 seconds or
> so, this wild mass of sparks is replaced by a single, very bright white
> spark, which is about the same length, but noisy, and which tends to
> fire vertically, or nearly so, and wanders around.

I have seen a similar discharge on one of my DiaboliCo coils.  One of the
longest runs I ever made was for about 5 minutes continuously, during the
shooting of a cable TV commercial.  (Vincent Price marathon, Hallowe'en of
97 & 98, Encore & Starz channels, TCI in case you saw it)

 Toward the middle of the run, the brush discharge, which had stopped
wandering and settled on a single part of the toroid, began to move outward
from the toroid on a thicker, bright white, smoothly undulating arc.  At the
end of this arc, the normal brush discharge branched out.  Gradually, over a
period of about 60 seconds, this amazing discharge lengthened and lengthened
until it was over four feet in length, with about 4 - 5 ft of brush
discharge coming off the end.  It was one of the oddest and most beautiful
discharge phenomena I've ever seen.  I have never seen it since.

 Note that this was indoors, in perfectly still air, on a coil running about
12kW.

PS: DiaboliCo and I have lost our only copies of the footage shot for that
commercial, and TCI is now AT&T- I'm sure the archive tapes have already
been recorded over.  If by some miracle, anyone happened to record it, I
would very much like to have a copy.

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