Re: Fanciful spark-augmenter

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

Original poster: "Kennan C Herrick by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <kcha1-at-juno-dot-com>


On Wed, 23 May 2001 17:01:00 -0600 "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
writes:
> Original poster: "Kennan C Herrick by way of Terry Fritz 
> <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <kcha1-at-juno-dot-com>
> 
> Ref:
> 
> http://hot-streamer-dot-com/temp/Tcbigspk1.pcx
> http://hot-streamer-dot-com/temp/Tcbigspk1.gif and
>  
> http://hot-streamer-dot-com/temp/Tcbgspk2.gif
> http://hot-streamer-dot-com/temp/Tcbgspk2.pcx:
> 
> It occurs to me that this notion--absent a fundamental flaw which, 
> if
> present, I hope someone will point out--might be useful for many of 
> you
> spark-gappers.
> 
And again, from KCH:

Almost no one has responded to this and perhaps with good reason:
connecting the 2nd part of the coil across the first in anti-parallel,
although it does shift the Fr as expected, brings the Q way down. 
However...I find that connecting a small capacitor in series with the 2nd
part of the coil and the gap might make the notion feasible.  Here's a
test I performed:

1.  Take a length of 20-cond. ribbon cable, wrap it around a 12" dia form
and connect turns 1-5 in series as a coil and also turns 6-16 as a 2nd
coil.

2.  Connect the 1-end to gnd, connect a .05 uF capacitor across 1-5 and
connect a scope probe to the 5-end.

3.  Apply a signal generator's output to turn 20, as excitation.

4. Now connect turn 6's end to the turn-5 end and connect the turn-16 end
via a 2200 pF capacitor and a switch (the gap) back to the turn-1 end
(gnd). 

5.  With the switch/gap open, the 5 turns & the .05 uF capacitor resonate
at 141 KHz.  With it closed, they resonate at 125 KHz with slightly
greater amplitude and there is a secondary, smaller-amplitude, resonance
at 407 KHz.

With such an arrangement the idea would be to excite the apparatus, from
a s.s. primary, at the 141 KHz frequency.  When the voltage has built up
sufficiently, over a number of cycles, the gap will fire, shifting the
resonant frequency to 125 KHz which would be the resonant frequency of
the secondary.  Since there would be no excitation at the 407 KHz
frequency, there would be no problem with that.  The energy stored in the
apparatus would now pass to the secondary, the gap would extinguish and
the cycle would repeat.

The purpose of doing all of this would be, of course, to allow for a
significantly larger build-up of energy than otherwise could be
accomodated in a s.s. system before secondary-spark break-out.  That
larger energy would then be so suddenly applied to the secondary that the
longer secondary-spark claimed for spark-gap systems could be generated.

So goes my conjecture, based as it is on my other conjecture that
secondary sparks are fractionally delayed by the inertia of the air that
surrounds them.

KCH
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