Marco's coil and breakout

[Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

	I have been wondering why Marco's coil does not like to breakout big
streamers without the help of a sharp rod.  I think I know why.  If you
look at the picture at:

http://www.saunalahti.fi/dncmrc/thorpict.htm

you will notice that his coil is REALLY big!  I wonder if the field stress
is simply reduced so much by this big coil that the critical voltage
breakdown point is harder to reach.  The big secondary may be "shrouding"
the top terminal so much that the terminal just does not see that big
potential gradient needed for an initial arc to form.  The streamer length
is right up there where it should be so not too much can be wrong with this
wonderful machine.

As far as the performance dropping.  I guess "I" don't think it is the gap.
 Them Wysock gap are pretty good :-))  I would suspect the SMPS (being an
SMPS kinda guy who knows too much ;-))  Be sure that thing is not drifting
or loosing power on you.  Next I would suspect that the cap is heating and
drifting.  Something is changing and I bet it is heat related.  Let it run
for a good longtime and see what gets hot.  It could even be a bad
connection somewhere.  I see some pretty thin wires going the the
hipotronics cap (can't see too well in the pictures).  Those wires have to
be like welding cable to handle all that terrible high peak RF current.

Cheers,

	Terry