I've noted a similar odd anomily in one of the tesla calc programs. Was Tesla Coil Blunderbusses

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Garry Freemyer by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <garry-at-ndfc-dot-com>

Hmm, I've noticed something similar on a web site that had a program to
calculate your tesla coil resonant frequency and tuning points. I don't have
the URL with me right now, but it had a place to enter your dimentions and
wire guage. It had a chart to look up wire diameters.

I noted that it was showing that I needed a huge number of windings on the
primary, on the order of 78 windings!! I had expected a figure between 8 and
18. It had a box to enter the number of primary turns and it was supposed to
give you a percentage to increase and decrease it. It also had a fine tune
button. I found that if I entered say 18 turns, it would say I needed to
increase it by a huge number. I got a tune point of about 78 turns if I
recall correctly. For giggles I entered ONE turn and it said to increase it,
so I entered 3 and it said I needed to increase it 300% so I entered nine
and it said I was in tune with the secondary at 9.3 turns.

I don't know exactly why this program did this, but I learned that I needed
to start at one or two turns and go up from there, or I would end up with it
telling me I needed a LOT of turns.


<Snip!>

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>"
<FutureT-at-aol-dot-com>

In a message dated 4/9/01 8:54:54 PM Eastern Daylight Time, tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
writes:

> >I have seen exactly that effect. I started with a smoothly running
>  >coil, then tuned the primary down to enhance the lower sideband
>  >response. Operation went from smooth to erratic but the sparks
>  >increased considerably in length (about 20% from memory).
>  >
>  >Regards,
>  >malcolm

Malcolm, all,

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