Re: TC triggered high energy discharge

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Original poster: "Jim Lux by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <jimlux-at-earthlink-dot-net>


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Sent: Saturday, March 01, 2003 6:02 PM
Subject: Re: TC triggered high energy discharge


 > Original poster: "Resonance Research Corp. by way of Terry Fritz
<teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <resonance-at-jvlnet-dot-com>
 >
 >
 > Bill did this back in 1972 --- I was there and photographed it.
Strangely,
 > we were both disappointed with the visible outcome --- no large bang at
all.
 >
 > Only after I developed the film did we see the very large plasma spark.
 >
 > The large inductance of the sec. coil and it's relatively high resistance
 > prevented any large currents from entering the sec.

So what was the circuit for the high power discharge.. The cap is sitting on
the ground, so it's case is ground.  The streamer hits the HV terminal.. so
it's got a low impedance connection to the topload now.  Where's the other
end of the circuit?  As you say, the impedance of the secondary is quite
high, although, it might discharge over a few tens of  milliseconds or so...
not much bang, because the duration is long and the rise time slow, but the
spark might look real, real bright esp in a photo image which doesn't get
fooled like your eyes...

Just a ballpark here.. say you've got 1 uF at 50 kV and you're discharging
it through a 40 mH inductor.. The LC resonant frequency would be a kHz or
so... Dissipating a kJ in a millisecond is a bunch of power, but not
many,many orders of magnitude greater than what you're already doing in a
TC.  As you say, too, the peak current would be low... some 250-300 Amps..
Probably the net effect would be to make the spark core  larger than it
normally would be..

What I'm looking for is how to discharge it without the secondary in the
circuit.. I'm starting to think swinging cascade triggered gap kinds of
ideas, with the top load in the middle.

 >
 > Dr. Resonance
 >