Re: Size DOES matter?

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: Steve Ward <steve.ward@xxxxxxxxx>

Conner,

Ive come to this same conclusion over and over again with my
experiments.  Its really hard to push that small coil past a given
point.  When you move up to a larger coil, its just much easier to get
the longer sparks.  I cant say i know of any good reason why a small
coil cant be pushed to produce sparks maybe 5X its secondary length,
but it just doesnt happen that way.

I am a bit surprised that you only got 33"... my coil which is
slightly smaller does 36" in a 2-coil mode and 42" in a magnifier
setup (at about 500 and 600W input power respectively), but the
magnifier has nearly twice as much "secondary" winding ;-).
Efficiency plummets when i try to exceed either of these spark
lengths... looks like that "brick wall" from the old days of
untuned-primary SSTCs has returned, except now the sparks are much
longer than before :-).

Steve Ward