Re: Differences between "bad" streamers and "good" streamers

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

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <Tesla729-at-cs-dot-com>

In a message dated 4/9/03 12:33:17 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
tesla-at-pupman-dot-com writes:
>You must realize that spark gap tesla coil streamers are NOT bright,
>I don't care how big and/or powerful your coil is. They are invisible
>with normal sunlight, hard to see in normal tungsten lighting, and
>only highly visible in the dark.
>
>The topload is mainly responsible for current in the discharge
>(brightness of the arc). If you're charging your topload with
>voltages enough to produce 36" streamers, don't expect any more
>streamer brightness.
>
>The streamers on my old 12" tesla coil, which made 12 foot arcs, were
>rather dim even with a properly sized (4 foot diameter) topload. But,
>when they struck something, they turned into a pure white stream of
>sparks, and sparks are where the fun is in my opinion ; )


Hi Justin, all,

After FULLY reading what you posted above, I do agree with you :-)
At first, I only read the first paragraph where you stated that it didn't
matter how powerful your coil was, the streamers would still not be
bright. I was mistakenly thinking of SPARKS which is when the
streamers connects to a grounded object. Sparks definitely CAN
be bright enough to see in open sunlight with adequate input power.
Streamers OTH never make a complete connection to ground and
are therefore much more limited in their current. Looks like I may
need a refresher course in the pupman archive glossary :-)

However, with lower power input levels, the SPARKS are not
impressively thick and bright either.

David Rieben