RE: THOR Bang energy vs. streamer length measured

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Original poster: "Jim Lux" <jimlux-at-earthlink-dot-net> 

At 08:38 AM 7/27/2004 -0600, you wrote:
>Original poster: "Denicolai, Marco" <Marco.Denicolai-at-tellabs-dot-com>
>Thanks to all you guys for your feedback and support. I cancelled my
>sorrow and meditation trip to the Himalayan peak :)
>
> > However, it would be great if you went that little bit
> > further :) The $64000 question for many coilers is:
> >
> > "What combination of bang energy and break rate will make my
> > coil produce the biggest sparks for a given input power"
>
>Well, I haven't gone down below 200 Hz but from 200 to 400 Hz it goes at
>follows.
>The BPS won't affect sparks length. For real! You will achieve much more
>often a certain distance with a higher BPS (see my 10.7J case) and will
>reach a top hit% dependent on your bang energy but that's it.
>The typical disruptive TC run (turn TC on, see if the grounded rod is
>hit) will not be modified! Eventually the streamer will get there if it
>can. Maybe with an higher BPS it will get there within 0.3 s instead
>than within 1 s. That's all.

This is a very interesting point...

We measure performance by "longest spark", but really, it's a statistical 
crap shoot.. the sparks go every which way, until one happens to go in the 
direction we're measuring (that is, I suspect that very few people have set 
up video cameras that can see all sides simultaneously, and do 
photogrammetry).  Increasing the break rate just raises the probability 
that the long spark happens to occur where we're looking for it.


However, what about the idea of sparks following previously ionized/hot 
gas?  Perhaps this is a slower time scale, and you'd see this effect in the 
under 100 bps range (probably more down in the 10 bps)..  What's the time 
scale for significant cooling of the spark channel?  Conductivity drops 
real fast once you get below around 7000K, but that doesn't mean that the 
breakdown voltage/ionization probabily along a path isn't still higher than 
the surrounding areas.