OLTC II More sparks!

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

Original poster: "Steve Conner" <steve.conner-at-optosci-dot-com> 

Hi list

I have been getting some good results with the OLTC II. It will now do 5
foot arcs, using 2.5kW of power at 400bps. This is now about as good as a
spark-gap coil running at 400bps, but a 120 or 200bps coil is still more
efficient.

There has been some trouble with the driver circuit: at high powers it jumps
between first and second notch quenching. This has made it run a bit
roughly, with excessive heating of the primary. Tuning the primary slightly
high seemed to help it, so this is what I did for these runs. But of course
it reduces the bang energy. So once this is sorted out- and I have a fairly
good idea how to fix it- I hope to get even bigger arcs 8-o

Thanks to Alan Sharp who organised the venue for these tests. (It's getting
a bit too big and noisy for the garden)

***

Here are some movies and pictures-

http://www.scopeboy-dot-com/tesla/oltc1.divx
Solid arcing to a target 4 and a bit feet away (800k DivX movie file)

http://www.scopeboy-dot-com/tesla/oltc2.divx
A single 5 foot arc (800k DivX movie file)

If your (WinDoze) computer doesn't want to play the movies, try changing the
file extension to .avi

http://www.scopeboy-dot-com/tesla/oltcmoresparks.jpg
Picture taken by Richie Burnett

http://www.scopeboy-dot-com/tesla/OLTCBigSpark.jpg
A still frame from the above movie showing the 5 footer


Steve C.