Original poster: Jim Lux <jimlux@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> At 06:10 PM 11/24/2005, you wrote:
Original poster: "JT Bowles" <jasotb@xxxxxxxxxxx>Use a counterpoise? You mean putting large amounts of al foil, spread on the ground, as an RF ground? WTF no way dude, that ruins the aesthetics of my coil.
Aluminum foil is actually probably not the optimum counterpoise material. I use chicken wire, which is a lot easier to handle.
i DO have a 4 foot Cu pipe driven into the ground, and 15 feet of wire is attatched to it. *I use this separate ground as a ground for the sparks to jump to.(from toroid directly to this)*I have read all over, 1 inch requires around 25,000 volts to make a spark connect. So, i have been measuring EVERYTHING using this equation. IN OTHERWORDS, I USE 1MM=1000V. My sparkgap is set at 7.5 to 8 mm, thus 7.5 to 8 kV
Spark gap distances depend a WHOLE lot on the shape of the electrodes. Most people set the gap distance empirically (i.e. turn on the transformer HV, but without coil connected, and set gap so it just barely fires)
* my output is 15.5 inches- so i times that by 25,000 volts per inch- to achieve a staggering388KV tesla coil output
Almost certainly not a valid way to measure voltage. Particularly for "long" sparks (where long is defined as distances greater than the radius of curvature of the electrodes) a lot of other factors come into play.
I HOPE YOU GUYS CAN UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING I JUST TYPED!