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spark gap and SSTC coil questions



Original poster: ben eells <squeels2171@xxxxxxxxx>

Hi guys, it's been quite a while since i've posted. I built 2 spark gap coils with the help of the people on the list last year. I'm thinking about building another coil but rather than just building a bigger version of what i've already done i'd like to try something different. I'm considering the SSTC. This is gonna be somwhat of a challenge for me. While i have become relatively familiar with the operation of spark gap coils (still no expert) i don't really understand the operation of SSTC's. I know that i'm gonna need a heavy duty transistor. It's been my observation that in spark gap coils the streamer length is mostly dictated by your transformer (obviously this is a simplified statement since variations in the capacitor, spark gap, secondary winding etc will also effect the overall performance of the coil. When all of these factors are optomized it's the transformer that determines how much power your other components have to work with. Also, it's generally the most expensive of the components which means your streamer length is gonna be determined by how much you want to spend on a transformer.) It seems that the streamer length of a SSTC is dictated by the size of the transistor much in the same way that a spark gap coil is dictated by the transformer (in terms of difficulty of finding the correct transisor as well as cost of the transistor). Is this a correct observation or am I way off on this assumption? I think the answer to this question is yes which leads me to my next questions.

My next question is would it be possible to build my own transistor? coilers have been building there own caps for years so this doesn't seem to far fetched but i haven't found much useful info on this subject. If anybody knows of a way to do this I'd like to hear about it.

An alternative to my first question is would it be possible to build a multiple mini transistor? I think the answer to this question is no but I'll admit that i know little about transistors and as far as electrical components go these seem be fairly hard to actually understand. (I can already see the jokes about using a pentium 4 to operate my coil pouring in.)

Now for something completely different. A long time ago I posted a link to a site showing how to modify a NST from 7.5k- 7.5k+ to 15k-. The site is here.

<http://www.rtftechnologies.org/emtech/nst.htm>http://www.rtftechnologies.org/emtech/nst.htm

I asked if this modification had any relevance to coiling and the answer i got (along with other answers) was no because there is no increase in the transformer performance only the oreintation of the voltage in relation to ground was changed. After thinking about this for a while I've come up with more questions. From what I understand by performing this modification I end up with a sine wave with a peak to peak voltage of 15k (is this correct?) and since it's 0-15k it's direct current (is this correct also?) If i'm right about this it stands to reason that i could set my SRSG for 60 breaks a second double the capacity of my MMC and make some really big sparks. Since it's DC i wouldn't have to worry about the capacitors discharging back into the transformer and could theoretically have even fewer BPS and have even longer sparks. would this be possible? If i'm correct and the transformer output is DC i'm worried that it's gonna totally screw up the way the coil works and have an end result of alot of power going through a coil that doesn't produce any streamers. Even if this doesn't work the way I'm predicting i'm bound to get some valuable feedback and as always it will be greatly appreciated. Thanks


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