Re: I've lost my k. Can someone help me find it?

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

Original poster: "Daniel Barrett by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <dbarrett1-at-austin.rr-dot-com>

    Hi List-

    Thanks to everyone who helped me find my K. I spent about 3 hours with
my single-MOT coil  today constructing an arrangement to vary my secondary
height. I carefully measured K12 at each 1/8" interval beginning with the
bottom turn of secondary 1/2 inch below the primary plane, all the way up to
4" above. Armed with this spiffy spreadsheet we went out to the backyard to
play. After trying all the variations I came to the following conclusion:

    "It just doesn't freekin' matter."

    I don't see any sweet spots, nulls or anything exciting at all. Arc
length appears to be proportional to K until it gets so high that racing
arcs occur and corrona starts coming out of all the bits it isn't supposed
to.

    I get arcs about 60 inches (at 1.4kW) with k at about .19 and racing
sparks above about .21.  My observations suggest that K is not something
worth tweaking, at least not as important as detuning to compensate for
streamer loading, spark gap, etc.

Is this consistant with what others are seeing?

Does it become more critical at higher power levels or other conditions?

db