Re: Fw: 15/120 NST Coil Static Gap Performance Problems

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

Original poster: Zimtesla-at-aol-dot-com 

And now the mystery.  My coil didn't respond too well to the sucker gap.
 > Streamers about 4 foot max.  But that's not the mystery.  No matter the
 > tuning, tweaking, adjusting of coil coupling, gap size,  cap size (LTR
 > static -at- 37.5nF or LTR rotary -at- 62.5nF, or sucker suction velocity, the
 > output did not improve beyond this, and the gap seemed to sputter, and
 > seemed to be at a low break rate (slower than SRSG at 100bps, you could
 > easily tell the difference between the two).  Now neither Claude nor I
could
 > understand the reason for this,

I had similar problems with a single static sucker gap. I believe the 
problem is caused by excessive ionization in the gap due to the high power 
used. I found that a single sucker gap worked ok for lower input power 
(30mA) but needed to go to a triple gap (three in series) to keep the 
performance from falling off on my 180mA coil.
Jim