RE: synchronous RSG or not

["Lau, Gary" <Gary.Lau-at-compaq-dot-com> (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>)]

I think what you are seeing - destructive racing arcs at the lower RPM's, is
saying that you may be overcoupled, and that your secondary may be on the
short side for such a powerful power supply.  When you run at the lower
RPMs, the cap has longer to charge and will charge to higher voltages, and
deliver a bigger bang size.  Any secondary length and topload size will only
support a given bang size.  You may also be able to increase the topload to
correct the problem.

With your present configuration I suspect that a sync RSG may be
counterproductive, resulting in still higher voltages on the cap.

Regards, Gary Lau
Waltham, MA USA

		
		Original poster: "D.Wightman" <dwightman-at-mmcable-dot-com> 

		Recently i ran my 8 inch coil at various speeds on my rsg.
it has 6 rotating
		electrodes and 2 fixed electrodes,the drive motor is d/c
with a built in
		tachometer..The coil is powered by a 14400 * 5kva pole
pig..the rpms were from
		1000 to 5000 rpm...all of this is on video tape which is 30
minutes long..an
		interesting phenomona happens..at fairly low power levels
and slow rpms the
		coil will function very well it was easy to get 5 foot ars,
by turning up the
		rpm of the rsg at this point there is no visible improvement
in performance..
		when you turn the power up to the coil it would tend to want
to arc down the
		secondary, and also hit the secondary..by increasing the
rpms of the rsg at
		this point it would seem to go back into tune and the
destructive arcing would
		stop..at this point you can really crank up the power to the
pole pig and get
		nearly constant 8 and one half and 9 and one half foot
sparks.. this secondary
		coil is only 25 inches high!!!! now upon further
experimentation...at full
		power..rsg at 5000 rpm 10 foot sparks super hot, hitting a
metal support beam
		for building we would begin to adjust the speed of the
rsg..down at approx 2000
		to 1000 rpm the destructive arcing would propagate..arc
length was effected by
		at least 10 to 15% "reduced arc length"..at 700 to 1000 rpm
you would see white
		hot spots on the secondary coils,by turning the rsg at that
point immediatly
		back to the 2500 to 3500 rpm range the hot spots went away
and the unit was
		really getting with the program. at that point the rsg was
turned up to around
		5000rpm, it seemed that power output was slightly reduced
maybe 5 %...
		unfortunatly this experimentation has destroyed the
secondary but the results
		are very interesting for those of you who would like a copy
of the tape let me
		know.. in the end, you will see it with lots of smoke
pouring out of the
		secondary and a small fire .....these things are GREAT...now
for the question
		one must ask...why do most perfer synchronous rsg's?? what
is the point.. it
		did seem that a spark gap can be tuned for a specific power
level....does
		synchronous operation tend to mostly protect the caps or the
transformer.....i
		realize that the 60hz a/c cycle can be optimized, sort of,,
by selecting a rpm
		on a rsg that tends to "hit" at the peak of each cycle...but
i really did not
		see this..thanks everyone.