Re: Ion Motors / Electrostatic Pendulum

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

Original poster: "Malcolm Watts by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <m.j.watts-at-massey.ac.nz>

Hello Chris,

On 17 Jul 01, at 12:12, Tesla list wrote:

> Original poster: "Christopher Boden by way of Terry Fritz
<twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <chrisboden-at-hotmail-dot-com>
> 
> > > Original poster: "Matthew Inman by way of Terry Fritz
> ><twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <twycross3-at-yahoo-dot-com>
> 
> Can also be used on a
> >	Tesla coil (below breakout).
> 
> "Ay, there's the rub"
> 
> None of the coils the Group has ever made are capable of a "Before Breakout" 
> condition. Every bang of the spark gap results in breakout, every time. The 
> breakout may be really short (Depending on tune). But our coil has a 1/2turn 
> area of tune so it's either all or nothing. We've never had a situation 
> where it was properly setup and didn't have streamers, even if they were 
> only 5BPS as we turned the variac up.

Every coil ever made is capable of operating in a "before breakout" 
condition. Dead simple to do. Just close the gap up until the primary 
energy falls below that required to generate enough voltage in the 
secondary to allow breakout. A dramatic demonstration of this was the 
sshot testing of Electrum. From memory the figures were: Vp = 34kV; 
no breakout. 35kV; 7 foot air streamers.  There is much to be learned 
by operating a coil in both modes and observing the results on a 
storage scope.

Regards,
malcolm