I'm trying to get a better understanding of the appropriate size capacitor for a Pole Pig driven coil. Obviously a larger capacitor will give a bigger bang, but too big will charge too slowly and may not achieve 120 BPS. As I understand it, 120 BPS is the magic number, anything lower essentially means charging cycles are missed and total power transfer is less? Correct me here if I'm wrong... So I'm seeking advice on capacitor size for a 5KVA 11" Coil. Any advice? Thanks, Curt.
Curt, A lot of what has been written about 120 bps applies to NST powered coils. Pig powered coils are more tolerant of different break rates. You'll want to use a rotary gap with a pig powered coil. A pig powered coil can be run at 120 bps but a synchronous rotary spark gap will be needed, and the capacitor value will be more critical. An async rotary works very nicely on a pig coil and has the advantage of permitting one to change the break rate during operation to produce interesting changes in sound and spark appearance. Break rates from 250 to 400 bps are commonly used for async coils. Some folks use a fixed async break rate of around 180 bps.John