Re: Ion patterns was Musical coils (fwd)

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2007 14:24:47 -0500
From: Bert Hickman <bert.hickman@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: Tesla list <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Ion patterns  was Musical coils (fwd)

Tesla list wrote:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 23:25:35 -0500
> From: Jeff Larson <jeff@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: Tesla list <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Ion patterns  was Musical coils
> 
> So Steve and I did that HV demo for the scifi con, and....
> 
> We did all sorts of coil tricks like, ion motors, gas tubes, CD 
> burning/erasing.  We ran both coils together and had them join arcs.  
> Since my coil is a rsg style and Steve's being solid state, the heavy 
> streamers did not happen too often, but it was very impressive when it 
> did.  The distance was something like 14 feet between the coils.  At one 
> point there was a slight breeze that was blowing across Steve's coil and 
> directly toward my coil.  So in other words my coil was downwind of 
> his.  I noted a very interesting thing.  The pattern that was created by 
> the upwind coil was picked up by the sparking of the downstream coil.  
> It appears that the breeze was moving the residual ions from one coil 
> into the range of the downwind coil and maintaining the pattern that was 
> created by the upwind coil.  The downwind coil re energized them making 
> the pattern visible again.  I guess it is not too surprising but this is 
> the first time I have seen this ion sharing between coils.  
> Unfortunately this phenomena did not show up well in my video.  However 
> Terry Blake shot the whole event with his new HD video camera.  Maybe we 
> can see that at some point.
> 
> Jeff Larson
> 
> 
> 
> 

Hi Jeff,

I also witnessed this effect that evening. Both coils performed 
flawlessly - it was the first time that I had seen a solid state coil 
playing "dueling sparks" with a pig-powered system. Simply awesome!!

Probably because it's a DRSSTC and also used a higher break rate, 
Steve's coil seemed to pack significantly hotter sparks. The sweeping 
banjo effect from the slight breeze was almost hypnotic. I suspect that 
we may have actually been seeing the effects of hot air channels (from 
previous leaders) being swept towards your coil. Hot air is less dense, 
and lower density air has a significantly reduced spark breakdown 
voltage. Temporary hot air "fossils" from Steve's spark channels may 
have provided preferential pathways that were more easily reignited as 
they approached your system. Although there's little doubt that 
significant quantities of relatively long-lived ions were also being 
generated in the air, these ions really don't contribute much in the way 
of supporting spark breakdown.

Bert
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