Follow-up to strange behavior

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

Original poster: "J. B. Weazle McCreath by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <weazle-at-hurontel.on.ca>


Hello Coilers,

First of all, thanks to all of you who responded to my post of
last week concerning the strange behavior of my coil.  Several
of you suggested it might be a spark gap problem, which I took
a look into tonight and made an interesting discovery.

My gap is an RQ/TCBOR seven segment, with a old vacuum cleaner
motor/compressor providing suction.  I had installed plastic
baffles in order to insure that the air was drawn thru between
the segments for maximum quenching and cooling, and it was with
these baffles where my problem lie.

Carbon tracking had formed on the baffles directly adjacent to
the point of closest gap between the segments.  This tracking
was effectively shorting out the individual gaps, hence making
the gap ineffective.  Cleaning of the gap segments and making
an alteration to my baffles to keep them spaced slightly from
the copper pipe segments not only solved the problem, but even
gave me about a 30% increase in streamer length!!

Those of you who are running similar gaps might want to check
your own units for carbon tracking on any internal baffling.
It shows how even the smallest of details can have profound
effects, but it also proves we're always learning something
in this great hobby!!


73, Weazle, VE3EAR/VE3WZL

Listening: 147.030+ and 442.075+
E-mail:    weazle-at-hurontel.on.ca
           or ve3ear-at-rac.ca
Web site:  www.hurontel.on.ca/~weazle