Re: First high Power session since '99

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

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <FutureT-at-aol-dot-com>

Dave,

Nice report.  Does the breakrate sound rather high?  If so, that
can throughput a lot of power even with a moderate bang size
without destroying the secondary.   Although the caps are
rated at 120 bps max, they can probably withstand a higher
bps since you have them in series.  Some of those cap specs
are somewhat inter-related.  In any case a higher bps won't
necessarily destroy them quickly but will just shorten their life to some
degree.  I have no idea how much though.

>
> Piglet time.



Indeed, sounds like something I might say   :)


>
> You see, I had been firing with 2 15/30 NSTs, but I was starting to tire of
> the wimpiness, 



One does tire of wimpiness....

Those multiple striped streamers may be showing the banjo effect.
This tends to show up in certain coils more than others, and is
the actual individual streamers from individual breaks it seems.  
These rise due to heat.  One would think the individualness of
the streamers would hurt the spark growth, maybe it does.
Air currents may accentuate this.  The air from the gap blower
may have been contributing to this effect, and also helping
to cause the looping streamers perhaps.

Yeah, I don't much like the acrid odor from coils.  My coils
produce it a lot too.  Yeah, bad nitrogen stuff.  

I don't know if a TCBOR gap will be of benefit.  A series quenched
rotary will work, but will probably give no benefit over a regular rotary.
At least I've never seen any benefit in tests I've done.  It helps the
quenching slightly, but didn't help the spark length, and didn't
permit me to tighten the coupling.  Maybe at higher powers, it 
can give more of a benefit, who knows?

I've never considered 1/2" copper tubing to be hard to work with.

John