If I were to weigh in on the filter discussion, I would say the chokes are unnecessary with a filter. However, I have even pushed my gap setting wide enough to kill an NST even with a Terry filter installed. This is when I realized the safety gap was useless due to my gap setting and sort of what drives me to stress the margin between safety and main gap needs to be large enough to allow the safety gap to work, otherwise, it's just a waste of labor and electrodes.
I do push my transformers with what I can get away with. If it fails, I'll just fix it or replace it. There are probably a few like me out there on that subject. With that in mind, I've even been thinking about doing away with the safety gap (my static gap coils only). The reason is I have little margin and it's an annoyance when set correctly and useless when it's not an annoyance.
The fact is, the probability of a decently built static gap failing is slim to none. So, what's the point of the safety gap in that type of system?
Take care, Bart Lau, Gary wrote:
Indeed. I think the reason that DC has been successful in not killing NST's is his conservative approach to keeping static gap width small. That, more than using any kind of filter, is the key to long NST life, and that's what we should be preaching. But human nature being what it is, the desire to increase performance has us opening the gaps to the max, and that's where Terry filters become useful. Regards, Gary Lau MA, USA
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