New 4" Coil: MMC blows MMC Away??

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

Original poster: "Dave Hartwick by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <ddhartwick-at-earthlink-dot-net>

I just finished a session firing this 4" sec for the first time--1500 turns
#26, 24".

Fo = 200 kHz
Power = 15/60 NST - 900w on 120 vac
Air blast gap
k = ~ 0.09

I fired with 2 Condenser Products 0.05 ufd caps in the series Equidrive
circuit, for 0.025 ufd total. I kept blowing the 20 amp breaker so I must
need some power correction.

What surprised me was the performance of this system. I did not actually use
an MMC cap for comparison, but I can just tell by comparing this system with
a similar one running MMC with the same NSTs (some days ago) that MMCs
(Panasonic ecw-h) may substantially outperform these commerical CP caps.
This is surprising, to say the least.

I need to make a direct A/B comparison using MMC and CP of identical value
of course, but experience tells me that this observation is probably
correct.

I was probably getting solid 24+" free air streamers and maybe 30+" direct
hits, so the system is not optimized, clearly. I'm using a primary that's
really designed for 6" systems. But the color of the streamers and general
behavior---I smell higher Q in those MMC jobs.

Is there an explanation for this?

Dave Hartwick