LTR vs. more primary turns

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

Original poster: "Chris Roberts by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <quezacotl_14000000000000-at-yahoo-dot-com>


Hello, it's me, the guy who can't build a tesla coil right. =P

Since my big coil is out of order for a while, I'm going to take some of 
the caps off of it and use them to build a 4kv, 38ma mini coil. However, I 
ran into a problem. We all know how a LTR cap increases the coil output, 
but as I was running calculations, I found that the higher the tank 
capacitance the fewer the number of primary turns it required to reach 
resonance. But I read on John Freau's website 
<http://hometown.aol-dot-com/futuret/page5.html>http://hometown.aol-dot-com/futuret/page5.html 
that using a higher number of turns on the primary will increase primary 
surge impedance, and will reduce spark gap losses. Is this true? If it is, 
then I pose the following question: Using a given secondary frequency, is 
it better to have an LTR cap with relatively few primary turns, or to have 
a smaller tank cap and more primary turns? Thanks for your infinite 
knowlege and wisdom.


-Chris