Re: A new idea? ...different geometries in coil construction moreefficient?

["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 Bart, all,

On 9 Apr 2002, at 1:23, Tesla list wrote:

> Original poster: "Barton B. Anderson by way of Terry Fritz
<twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <tesla123-at-pacbell-dot-net>
> 
> Hi Antonio, All,
> 
> Tesla list wrote:
> 
> > Original poster: "Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz by way of Terry Fritz
> <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <acmq-at-compuland-dot-com.br>
> >
> > Tesla list wrote:
> > >
> > > Original poster: "Mr Gregory Peters by way of Terry Fritz
> > <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <s371034-at-student.uq.edu.au>
> 
> <snip>
> 
> > The coil will really quite probably "burn up" due to racing sparks if
> > k is too high (although it's still not clear why).
> > <snip>
> > The losses decrease with high k due to the faster energy transfer.
> > What is frequently mentioned is that too high coupling causes racing
> > sparks, and that best performance is obtained just below this condition.
> > So, there is experimental evidence that increasing k is a good thing.
> 
> My observation of racing sparks have always been sparks appearing to start
> at the top and arc nearly perfectly
> vertical down the coil. Along the way, there have been times when the
> racing arc would break away from the secondary
> (typically hitting the outer primary winding).
> 
> A hint of why I expect is due to the two waveforms at high k causing high
> enough potential at the nodes of unevenly
> distributed voltage at the secondary. I expect the arc travels down to the
> next node (directly vertical) and
> periodically breaks out from one of these voltage nodes lower down on the
> secondary (sometimes not, in which case it
> finds the primary inner winding).
> 
> Bart

I'm a reluctant convert to the view that the resonator is ringing at 
considerable amplitude at one of its harmonics (probably there is 
wave top vs time coincidence going on, a reflection of its dispersive 
properties). I have a resonator, deliberately wound with somewhere 
near 2000 turns crammed into a height of about 20". It is instructive 
to run it with different primary tunings. I've seen beautiful corona 
loops arcing from the top back down about 1/4 of its height and 
terminating at the windings. This was a few years ago and I don't 
remember all the effects I saw but they included racing sparks of the 
more familiar kind. It was principally the tssp modelling and 
resultant videos which dragged me into the 21st century.
    Of course, generating a voltage too high for the length of the 
windings will also result in sparks streaking up most, if not all of 
the length of the windings. I've deliberately done this also.

Regards,
Malcolm