Re: first coil help

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

Original poster: "Barton B. Anderson by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <tesla123-at-pacbell-dot-net>

Hi Ryan,

Tesla list wrote:

> Original poster: "James Mathisrud by way of Terry Fritz
<twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <jrmathis-at-pressenter-dot-com>
>
> im a new coiler, and i have been trying to tune my first coil, and have had
> a few
> problems. i am getting it to resonate, i know this because the lightbulb is
> glowing, but i just can't seem to get any sparks to breakout, i have a
> small sphere
> discharge terminal, the secondary is 4.5in, 800 winds #22, its tapped at 11
> turns,
> because that seems to be the best spot from the testing ive been doing, im
> using
> salt water caps, i have an air blast gap.thats set at about 1/2 in, im
not sure
> what the average spacing is supposed to be, but i keep opening it farther and
> farther, and the power of the coil seems to be increasing please advise
> before i
> break something!

This is a wide gap spacing and will brake something (typically the cap).
I'm not sure if your static gap is
a series of pipes set close together or simply a single gap. Regardless, I
would not go beyond 0.2 inch. As
you noticed by observation, opening the gap spacing allows the cap to
charge to a higher voltage. But, you
want to limit the cap charge voltage to a predetermined level based on your
tranformer output and caps
upper limit. Obviously, salt water caps are self healing and can take some
abuse, but they can die too when
over stressed. It's good your using air flow. The whole idea of air flow
and/or several pipe segments to
make up the gap is to keep the gap voltage conduction point at the same
voltage leval from bang to bang, so
that the gap doesn't conduct at lower and lower voltage levels as the coil
is running.

The bulb shows your getting power to the top terminal, but there may be
many reasons why your not breaking
out, and I'm not one of those people will guess at the possibilities
(doesn't mean the coils are tuned).
There's just not enough coil information described to do that. If you can
describe in "much greater detail"
ALL the information about your system, you will get better results to help
pinpoint problems.

> also, imy ground is a 1in copper water pipe, and is wetted down before each
> use its been driven about 1.5 feet into the ground i don't know if this
may be
> affecting it or not. thanks for your help
> Ryan

This is fine. Your problems are upstream.

Take care,
Bart