noob question

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Original poster: ben eells <squeels2171@xxxxxxxxx>

I've been looking for quite a while to find an answer to this 
question and haven't had any luck. Please don't flame me too bad. 
I've built my first coil based on the schematic for the 12" spark 
coil from information unlimited. I can run my coil for maybe 20 
seconds or so (depending on the width of my gap) but eventually the 
spark gap stops firing and the coil stops working and won't start 
again until I turn it off and back on again. I've tried shortening 
the spark gap but the problem will persist and the more I try to run 
the coil the sooner the gap stops firing. Can anyone explain to me 
why this happens and what can be done to keep the coil running while 
the power is on. The only explaination I have been able to come up 
with by myself is that my capacitor is slowly dieing (I've had to 
replace the capacitor once already) and the longer I run it it can't 
produce the breakdown voltage.