breakout points

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

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

Hi coilers,

I wanted to pass on something that I observed last night.
Since my move to a suburban location w/out access to
a shop w/ enough space to run my 8 to 10 ft. streamer
spouting coil, I have had to greatly reduce the frequency
w/ which I fire my coil. I have to roll it out on the driveway
to fire it and I want to disturb the new neighbors as little
as possible. One advantage of running this way though
is that I can remove the breakout point and let the sec.
voltages build up really high before breakout. I tried this
last night but much to my chagrine, the coil started exhi-
biting the "racing sparks"  ARGGG!!! I had not had any
problems w/ this for a long while until I removed the break-
out point. I suppose a 38.5" long secondary is a little phy-
sically short for a 10 ft. spark output? The breakout point
would immediately start spouting sparks as soon as the
SG began firing but the smooth toroid does not begin to
break out until the variac voltage is about half way up.
So obviously, the higher voltage buildup before breakout
w/out the breakout point is placing extra voltage stress
along the length of my secondary coil. I think Dave
Wightman? had success in preventing this problem
by placing several large plastic disc along the length
of the sec. coil to prevent the creepage effect? I may
try this when I get around to it ;^)

TC sparkin' less and running my JL and can crusher
more in Memphis,

David Rieben