Re: the cure for racing sparks

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

Original poster: "boris petkovic by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <petkovic7-at-yahoo-dot-com>


D.C.,
 
> Two things come to mind.  First, racing sparks are
> usually caused by either
> too small a toroid on top which provides ineffective
> electostatic field
> control down the coil and second, the usual culprit,
> not enough available
> inductance in the primary (too few turns) to hit the
> proper tuning point.
> You are tuning at the wrong primary resonance point.
>
---
Yes,this explanation relating toroid size-field
control-detuning combining effects holds.
---
 
> A second note is that you may be "overcoupled" which
> causes the
> "double-hump" on the freq, ie, splitting the res.
> freq. into two different
> freqs which beat against each other.  
---
Overcoupling (ie.increased coupling) introduces a more
frequency split -more expressed "double hump" in a
freq. spectrum of coil as you say,but that spliting
-beating frequencies against each other whatever,isn't
direct cause of racing sparks .It is overcoupling
itself.More coupling means less space between primary
and secondary + faster transfer of energy from primary
to secondary with less energy loss when compared with
smaller coupling.That results in stronger local fields
and higher secondary voltage for given input
energy.Therefore ,it again comes to field control as
stated above.

Cheers,
Boris    

_