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RE: SMALL SPARKS: PLENTY OF POWER- NO TIME

Original poster: "Ralph Zekelman" <gridleak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Gary,

I regularly use helical coils with the half-wave twins and bi-polars.  I
wind 1/4-inch Cu tubing to allow around 2-inch spacing to a 3 or 4-inch
diam secondary. There is no problem with racing sparks. I do not understand
why the helical primary seems to be in disfavor with many coilers since
many of the historical *Tesla era* photos show a helical coil.

Ralph Zekelman


-----Original Message-----
From: Tesla list [mailto:tesla@xxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, October 24, 2005 8:43 PM
To: tesla@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: SMALL SPARKS: PLENTY OF POWER- NO TIME

Original poster: "Lau, Gary" <Gary.Lau@xxxxxx>

Hi Jeremiah:

I would also suspect that the primary tap may not be optimum.  With a 15
turn primary, one can vary 1-2 turns and not see a world of difference,
but since you say you use only six turns, it may be very sensitive to
fractional turns.  It looks like it wouldn't be too difficult to replace
the insulated wire you have with solid bare wire, at least temporarily,
or ideally 1/4" copper tubing, to permit quick and easy tapping at
arbitrary points.

It's curious that you've not reported racing sparks.  It's always been
said that the use of a helical primary will result in too-high coupling
and racing sparks.  Maybe no one's ever actually tried it?  I hope so,
yours is very compact!

I don't think that 20 Amps is at all out of line; I use at least that
much with my 15/60, and that's with PFC caps.