Basic TS curcuit conflict

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Original poster: "jpeakall by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <jpeakall-at-mcn-dot-org>

Hi All,

I Have a small coil I have been operating off various power sources. The
specs are:

5 1/2" helical primarry, 12 turns of 12 AWG auto wire
3/12 " secondary, 436 turns of 22 AWG anameled wire.

The circuit I have3 been using is from John Couture's book, and in it one
side of the transformer goes to one side of the tank cap, and the other
trans lead to the other side of the tank cap. One side of the cap goes to
the SG, and the other to one end of the primary.  The aligator clip side of
the primary goes to the other end of the SG. On other circuits out there,
like on Gary Lau's site, the trans leads both go to the spark gap, with the
tank caps going between one end of the SG and the primary.

What is the difference between these two set ups? I tried the way it is on
Garry's site, and it seems to work better, but I get tons of racing sparks.
I had previously been using a .038 tank cap,, and I went down to .021 .014,
still getting racing sparks. Very little backfire from the safety gap
however. After a few seconds, I blew a tank cap. 

Is it just that the other circuit is way less efficient, and so I never had
the racing spark problems? Is hooking it up as on Gary's site harder on the
caps? 

Jonathan Peakall