RE: Recent power arc experiments

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

Original poster: "Dale Hall by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <Dale.Hall-at-trw-dot-com>

Hi Boris,
Just a thought...I haven't tried this but you could 
Try running the resistors with no arc gap to eliminate the power division
(check for temp rise) 
(may need >>R to better simulate entire channel Z), 
i.e. resistors connected to the topload, 
then with 1", 2",... controlled gap length arcs, etc.

then Try ~200K ohms with no arc 
then with arc to presumably divide power in ~half ?
(when arc R=~200k?)

Measure I w/ oscilloscope current probe around
the return side of the resistor to low side of Sec
as a check on current waveform shape to calc avg power.

regards, Dale

-----Original Message-----
From: Tesla list [mailto:tesla-at-pupman-dot-com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2001 3:50 PM
To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Recent power arc experiments

Original poster: "boris petkovic by way of Terry Fritz
<twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <petkovic7-at-yahoo-dot-com>

Hi All,

The result of following experiment,fellow coiler
conducted  recently,seems bit strange (at least for me
,since I suggested him to do it estimation vise).

According to the instructions, he hung ,verticaly,
above 10" spherical terminal of his coil several
resistors and grounded them via wire in a celling.
Between  sharp point on the top of the sphere and
string of resistors there was formed variable gap that
way.
For the particular coil and power level used,it was
found to be most convenient to use 19" gap spacing.
At this stage ,attached arc would be quite stable and
could last for quite a time without deattachment.
The string of resistors was made of identical parts-
each resistor rated 5 W-1500 ohms.
   
Now,the strange part.
Experimentally,by low frequency test,it was found that
,if forced to dissipate 10 W ,these resistors
considerably  get warm.
Since ,there were 9 of them put in series,90 W would
do a nice heating effect to them (very soon).
But,nothing of the expected heating was noticed.
The experimenter,after few minutes of TC run turned
the power off,and touched the resistors.
They stayed reasonably cool.

Used input power level for that and other experiments
was always the same -about 650 W.  
This is a nice classical TC system;with 300 BPS
rotary,20"*6" closewound secondary and by using 650 W
it can occasionally  develop 36" point to point arcs. 
19" spacing provided for the arc the most stable
condition with  the dimmest primary gap light running,
though.
The result of all said :Total string resistance
9*1500=
13500 ohm consumed less power than secondary power
arc.
This is very much in confrontation with usual view of
the impedance ballpark of such arc.
Anybody else performed similar expertiments,and
wondered why there wasn't any smoke where it had to
be?
Any comments ,and thoughts on this would be welcome.

Regards, Boris