RE: Awsome first light !! but...

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

Original poster: "Lau, Gary by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <Gary.Lau-at-compaq-dot-com>

While your safety gap may have been set for 12kV, what was your main gap set
to?  It sounds like your main gap was set to something higher and allowed
the safety to fire.

As a side issue, it's generally not recommended to use a safety gap alone
across your cap.  With no safety gap current-limiting, the discharge current
could potentially be bad for your cap.  Also, it's impossible for the cap
voltage to ever be any higher than the voltage across your main gap.
Whatever your main gap is set to will also limit the cap voltage, and the
cap-gap is redundant.

Gary Lau
MA, USA


>Original poster: "The Big Giant Kevin by way of Terry Fritz
<twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <neo4s-at-hotmail-dot-com>
>
>WOW, 8 inch streamers, at 40 volts on the variac. Help from the list was 
>invaluable; I could not have done it without you guys, thanks to everyone. 
>But... I couldn't seem to get the variac over 40 or 50 volts then my
capacitor 
>safety gap would start to fire. I set the cap safety gap to fire at 12 kV. 
>Why was it so active with only 5 kV out of my NST? Tuning seemed to help 
>reduce the safety gap firing, but not much. I didn't spend a great deal of 
>time tuning. I was in a small metal shed; it was 95 degrees outside, and
110 
>degrees inside. Florida sucks in the summer, nothing but mosquitoes and 
>humidity. Could tuning be my problem here? Nothing special in my setup, 
>12/30 NST, Terry protection, static gap with fan, LTR cap, line filters. 
>Thanks for any help, Kevin