Re: Marco's coil and breakout

[FutureT-at-xxxxxxx (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-xxxxxxxxxx>)]

In a message dated 11/2/00 11:13:41 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
tesla-at-pupman-dot-com writes:

> 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.

Terry, Marco, all,

Marco is also achieving his spark length basically via high bps,
and high bps means a smaller bang size, and therefore needs
a smaller toroid than a comparible (input power) low bps machine.  A 
low bps machine would use a larger bang size for a given spark
length, and can tolerate a larger toroid.  At least this is what I've
seen in my own work.  I notice that Marco's coil is a little less
efficient than I would expect given the power input, and I attribute
this to the high bps design.

John Freau