Progress ?

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Original poster: "James by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <mustang3-at-cox-dot-net>

Hi Tesla guys,
    Things are moving well. On my big coil (12.4 in X 62 in. winding length),
I'm only getting 7-8 foot sparks with the ARSG. I'm not back into tune yet. My
short secondary (12.4 X 38 in. winding of #20) burst into flames, on 2
occasions. This means a complete rewind. So I am using the big secondary which
is wound with 3 sizes of wire #14 for 8, #18 for 42 in., and # 20 for 11 in.
About 1370 turns of wire. During testing and tuning, 2 of my large caps died.
The remaining caps tune me way out on the primary coil(about 10 turns (-at-70 Nf
primary cap)). Ok, all of the history aside here's the problem. I have a small
toroid at the very top of the secondary and above it one of the nice formed
aluminum ones(approx 9 X 21). The small toroid gets hot! "I kid you not"; I
have never noticed if the little guy got hot before. So, does anyone else have
probs in this nature? I think I need the little toroid to control breakout from
the secondary's top windings. I have a been limiting the input current to 40-50
amps.
    I have been using many thin layers of Goop as a insulator on top of the
secondary. This stuff works well. Racing sparks help to a minimum.
    Also I thot I'd put my $0.02 in on the ballasting choke. I used two 600
feet long pieces of #10 wire wound parallel on a masesonite(sp) form 1 1/4
square inside X 17 in. long. The core is insulated(painted with clear) 1/16
welding rods cut to 15 in. or so and stuffed into a piece of PVC thinwall about
2 1/2 feet long (one end gets the rods). Then I pour some urathane glue into
the mess, and it's sealed. I lock the the core with a overcenter device. This
permits easy adjustments of the pole xmfr's current.
                                                                           
                            Later,
                                                                           
                                James