Re: Practical limit to number of turns on primary ? ? ?

["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 1/29/03 7:24:09 AM Pacific Standard Time, 
tesla-at-pupman-dot-com writes:
>Bart,
>   I personally believe the extended length of the discharge is due to the
>space charging of the system itself. in the 120" strike to the aluminium
>ladder, the ladder itself glowed with a corona extending toward the
>discharge just before contact.
>   also, as i noted previously, our bodies themselves were charges to the
>point that after shut down we could touch a neon tube which would light
>for an inch or two?


Bart, Marc, all,

First of all, congratulations Marc on such a huge spark-length from such
a realtively low input power. What I do wonder, however, about such long
sparks from such relatively low power inputs is how thick and bright are these
extremely long sparks? Are the said 120" sparks going to be as bright and
earth shaterringly loud as the powerful 120" sparks from a more typical
6 to 8 kVA from a reversed pole pig, resonating in the 75 to 100 kHz range?
We all know that the total average ouput power levels cannot exceed,
and in fact never quite achieve the average input power levels. Tesla
coils simply put out much higher peak power levels than the average
input power by discharging a relatively small amount of energy in a
relatively very short time period, thus making for a very high power output
in a very low duty cycle. John Couture explains this well in some of
his Tesla coil bulding manuals. I'm not well enough versed in the com-
plex mathematics to fully explain this in long equations, but I believe
I do fully understand the basic principle ;-))


Anyway, I guess I'm just wondering if the current level of 2 kVA, 120"
sparks is going to be as high as the current level of 7 kVA, 120"
sparks, assuming, of course, full proper tuning of both coils?

Sparkin' in Memphis,
David Rieben