Re: First light - with MMC

["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>

HI Shaun,

On 3 Apr 2002, at 23:16, Tesla list wrote:

> Original poster: "Shaun Epp by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>"
<scepp-at-mts-dot-net>
> 
> 
> Well on the easter weekend I fired up my coil with the new MMC bank I built.
> After some tuning, lots of tuning, I managed to get ~4 foot growing
> streamers, neat :-)    I can draw ~2 1/2 foot arcs to a grounded discharge
> arc stick and this was all done using a metal screen counterpoise and the
> house ground.  I was thrilled so see it work so well.
> 
>  My only conplaint is that I can only see the sparks in the dark, they are
> purple blue in colour and white when I draw sparks to a grounded arc rod.
> What can I do to make them more visible?
> 
> My coil is a 4.25" by 22" secondary with a flat spiral primary, and two
> section spark gap, and a 12Kv -at- 60mA NST for the power source.  The
> capacitors works out the LTR   at 0.0215uF.  I also bought a 12" * 3"
> torroid  and I'm using a Terry filter.   All connection cables have soldered
> connectors and are of heavy gauge in the tank, #8 car audio power cable, and
> I use 14 gauge 35 Kv wire for the rest.
> 
> Thanks everyone for answering my questions,  now time experiment and make in
> better.
> 
> Shaun Epp

Use a *much* larger toroid, add more primary inductance maintain tune 
and stand back. But - you might very well be voltage limited by the 
length of your secondary so you will probably be unable to tolerate a 
much larger radius-of-curvature for the terminal. If you are able to 
do it, it would pay to pop another toroid on top of the existing one, 
retune, and check for racing sparks. If that works OK, sit another 
one on top, retune and try again. Go for it.

Regards,
malcolm