Re: new little coil

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

Original poster: "Metlicka Marc by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <mystuffs-at-orwell-dot-net>



Tesla list wrote:
> 
> Original poster: "Terry Fritz" <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>
> 
> Hi Dave,
> 
> People get 30 plus inch arcs from 12/30 NSTs so you have room for
> improvement.  Hopefully, easy stuff :-))
> 
> Three things come right to mind.
> 
> You arcs look like it might not be in tune.  The primary and secondary need
> to be tuned to the same frequency.  I do not know how much you have done in
> this area.  Maybe you have done calculations or used the computer programs
> to find the frequencies and you know what they are.  Or you just put the
> part together from scratch and it worked fairly well anyway :-))  Working
> on the tuning may give you far greater arc for free.  A larger top terminal
> like a dryer duct toroid will really help too and it will work once the
> tuning is figured out.
> 
> The spark gap is probably not the best and wasting a lot of power.  For
> now, just keep it clean since a better one is "work" and other things will
> help much more.
> 
> The wine bottle caps are probably real ineffiecient.  After the tuning
> thing, try to get an MMC going.  that might double the arc length.
> 
> So tuning, MMC, and then a better gap are my suggestions.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
>         Terry

Dave,
To add to what terry has said:
It looks like your primary coils are touching? Are they bare copper
wire, If they are touching each other you could be having effectively
less
turns, effecting tuning? Is that the main gap on top of the
transformer, where the safety gap should be? if you don't have a safety
gap, get one set up or you may loose the transformer all together,
terry's filter with gap would be perfect.
  Did you wrap aluminum foil around the bottles then tape? maybe add
some more bottles and wind the primary onto a flat spiral, or with the
height to diameter of your coil, an inverse cone. These are easy to make
by getting a poly house plant water tray and hot glue some sticks
sticking out at an angle. with your coil i would try to get 15 or more
turns for tuning. Also it might be a good idea to cut a bunch of copper
tubing in 2" lengths and space them with playing cards like some coilers
do, this will give you a multi static gap that is easier to grab a good
tune with.
With this fine tuning i'm sure you will be shooting some good arcs very
soon.
Take care,
Marc

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