New Coil/RSG Annoyance

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

Original poster: "Marry Krutsch by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <u236-at-earthlink-dot-net>

Hi All!

	I cobbled together a "new" coil from an old 4" secondary and other
parts I had sitting around.  It is powered by two H&R xfmrs, and spits
out a single continuous 4 foot streamer.  I'm considering this good,
since my caps use polyester ;-( dielectric, and my tank wiring is
stranded 18 AWG (both heat up FAST).

	Anyway, I spend two hours using systematic trial and error to try to
phase my SRSG, and couldn't do it.  Whenever power was applied, no
matter how high/low the variac was set, my safety gap fired madly.  I
was attempting to run at 240 BPS.

My Q's are:

1. Does the rotary trouble stem from my STR tank cap (0.075 uF)?  I have
had the same type of trouble with my big coil (it also ran STR).

2. Why I had NO racing sparks with this system even though the PSU was
the same one I used on my old coil (destroyed by racers), and the
secondary is shorter.  The cap is about as big as the one on the old
coil, and stores the same amount of energy.

3. How much might my crappy tank wiring/polyester tank cap be impacting
performance?

Thanks in advance,
Winston

PS-  Until tonight I hadn't run a coil in about a month.  I almost
forgot how much fun this is :-)))