RQ gap (was:Re: Coil on ebay this week only!!!)

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

Original poster: "Mike Novak by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <acmnovak-at-msn-dot-com>

He he he...
Glad you've "seen the light" Garry. After about 30 minutes of intermitted
operation, the tubes are "warm" to the touch. I could've mounted them on
acrylic with no problems. However this type of gap was kind of a pain in the
a** to build. You must do a perfect job on a drill press in order for
everything to look right.
The tubes are actually 8" long and 1" in diameter. They were fabricated from
1" "hard" copper drainpipe. I got a 12 foot length of it at ACE for $8 as I
recall.
The gap gives excellent results, actually 20" from 460 VA. It's not exactly
JF efficiency, but it works well enough for most people.
Adding a cooling fan is not neccesarily to cool the pipes. It is mainly to
provide airflow across the gap. A slight performance increase can be noted
by introducing a small airflow across the gap on that coil. An extra inch or
two may result.

IMHO, it is easier to build SRSGs than RQ gaps, but that's mainly because I
have access to a good machine shop at school.

Safe coiling!!!

-Mike Novak



> Original poster: "Garry Freemyer by way of Terry Fritz
<twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <garry-at-ndfc-dot-com>
>
> Ye know it's funny how I can miss the obvious till I actually see an
> example.
>
> In your item on ebay, you show a Richard Quick style spark gap with pipes
> that look to be about six inches long. It never even occurred to me that
> with such long pipes, you probably wouldn't need to put it into a pipe and
> run a cooling fan on it.
>
> I think I like the looks of your gap and will give that a try myself. How
> well does that gap seem to do ye? I've tried to make a gap like that in a
> pipe but I didn't have near the dexterity required to get the spacing
right.
> Even using a gap tool, I just coulnd't get it right. Tightening it would
> just make the pipe roll over and end up being too wide on one side and
touch
> the next pipe on the other side.