Re: breakout points

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

Original poster: "Terry Fritz" <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>

Hi David,

You might try retuning the primary a little.  Shorter streamers will 
require a bit higher primary tuning and/or something may have gotten 
"jiggled" in the move.  Raising the secondary a little will stop the racing 
arcs too.

Cheers,

         Terry


At 09:25 AM 5/18/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>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