Suicidal Secondary--Update

["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 everyone.
First I should thank all who gave suggestions.  I just got around to
running the coil tonight, and had a chance to put a few of your ideas to
work.  I patched the craters from last week's run with 5 min. epoxy, put
plexiglass washers around the top half of the coil, and rested a 3" dia.
toroid on the top washer as an anti-corona ring.

These worked to some extent, but not as well as I hoped.  I got no full
secondary arcs, but had many hot racing arcs trying to find a way around
the washers.  There were also arcs running in between the washers.  I
did the coupling calcs. that Terry suggested, and found that the highest
coupling I achieved was 0.12.  It sure looks like I'm overdriving the
heck out of the coil, but I'm only running at 1.5kVA.  The bang size is
about 5 joules.  I tried both toploads (6" by 20" and 8" by 22"
toroids), with the coil tolerating the smaller one best, but with much
decrease in spark length.  My big topload gave the coil trouble, but
cranked out 4 1/2 ft. sparks (at the most).  This run was done in moist
air, when the racing arcs are less of a problem.  Running the coil on a
dry day would probably be a disaster.

I'm sorry if I'm being a nuisance, but I am really at a loss here.   I
can't see how many of you are able to crank 4 and 5 kVA into a 6 inch
coil similar to mine (achieving sickeningly large sparks in the process
:-))  What did I do wrong?

On another note, I know that many of you have a few of those copier
xfmrs.  What do you think of them?  I know some have had problems with
them.  How many have been successfully stuck together in a supply?  If I
ever get a coil that can handle more than 2kW, I plan to do a series
parallel arangement with 4, 6, or maybe even 8 units (MOT style).  Maybe
my power supply will end up looking like my MMC array :-).

On more thing.  How many caps do all of you have in your MMCs.  I have
90 in mine (it's a tough unit, IMO).  I paid about $100 for 100 of the
caps.  They are in the C&H Sales fall 2001 catalog on page104 at the
bottom right corner.  I don't know how they would hold up in a "real"
coil system, but they sure work well for me.

Still stumped,
    Winston K.