Re: tesla-d Digest V02 #901

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

Original poster: "Greg Leyh by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <lod-at-pacbell-dot-net>


>Original poster: "Nicholas Field  <nick.field-at-hvfx.co.uk>
>
>[snip]
>I _could_ charge up a big reservoir cap from a multiplier driven by a 4/20
>transformer, then dump all zillion joules into Thor's tank circuit in a
>short burst and claim 18 feet from a 4/20 neon.  However I doubt many people
>would feel that was in the 'spirit' of the contest!  The reservoir cap
>approach also has the effect of taking a lot of the skill out of the contest
>and handing the trophy to the guy with the biggest cap bank (eg. Greg Leyh,
>who has more than his fair share of coiling trophies already!).


Actually I don't have any at this point, although
I do have a nice beam-tree for my fireplace mantle
from Ed Wingate's T-thon swap meet last year.
It's not entirely clear what such a trophy should
look like, but one should hope that it's a 'fully
functional' prize.  ^_^

A single-shot coil with an arbitrarily large local
energy store would be operating at a disadvantage,
without the benefit of a pre-ionized discharge path
from the previous strikes.
Any given coil will have a maximum energy per pulse
that it can process.  Increasing the local energy
store beyond that point would increase the total
flame output, both intentional and not, instead of
just the spark length.

For a contest where the coil has to fit within a
given box, I would bet that a rep-rated machine
would win over a single-shot machine.