Re: Racing sparks vs. primary design

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: Steve Conner <steve@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

> MandK can do it two if you take the coil in 0.5 inch
> sections:

This is sort of what I'm after. But I want to go one
step further and get a plot of the voltage
distribution up the resonator when it's excited on
only one of its resonant modes by a DRSSTC driver.

As far as I know, only Paul Nicholson's raw TSSP code
can do that. FANTC can't- the algorithm that draws the
voltage profiles has built in the assumption of a
spark gap driver that excites all the modes at once.
So the plot is a mix of (mostly) the two lowest modes,
which I believe have totally different profiles.

I was trying to figure out how to measure it
experimentally. Maybe with some kind of capacitive
pickup, but the primary gets in the way of traversing
it up and down the secondary. Also the pickup measures
voltage, not e-field.

Or I thought maybe I could tape a dozen neon bulbs
(with legs chopped off) to the secondary in a kind of
bargraph, and note how much DC bus voltage it takes to
light each bulb. I am hoping the bulbs will light when
the voltage gradient on the secondary wires
immediately underneath them gets to x volts per meter,
where "x" is sort of a constant :-/

Steve Conner