Re: Length of controlled sparks vs air streamers, was THOR: First observati...

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

In a message dated 3/17/04 2:31:12 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
tesla-at-pupman-dot-com writes:

Steve,

Well that is interesting.  The bang size is consistent also on my
TT-42 coil, so based on your reasoning, my controlled sparks
may be a similar % to the longest sparks compared to what you found.
I'll have to do the comparison one of these days for the TT-42.

I wonder too how much of a bang size variation is tolerable
for holding the continuous spark at a certain length.  It would
seem to me that some degree of variation would be *overcome*
by the hotness of the ion streamer channel.  Breakrate may
be a factor too.  Did the ratio of controlled to free air spark length
remain the same as the breakrate was varied on your coils?

Thanks,
John


>I have done it for my OLTC mini coil. The controlled spark was not much
>shorter than the furthest distance it could hit. i.e. if I put a target 12"
>away, I would get an occasional hit, but at 10" it was a continuous solid
>arc. The longest streamers to air seemed to be about 10" too.
>
>I also did it with my spark-gap coil, back when I was running a 9nF tank
>cap. The result was 31" for occasional hits and about 24" for a solid
>continuous arc. All the air streamers I observed fell within these limits. I
>did once get a freak strike that must have gone 4 feet, but it has never
>happened again.
>
>I think my coils show these consistent results because they all run off DC,
>so the bang size varies very little. OTOH, an AC charging coil with an ASRG
>would have a constantly changing bang size and much more "interesting"
>behavour ;)
>
>Steve C.
>http://www.scopeboy-dot-com/tesla/
>