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[TCML] Streamer heating using RF injection



Can spark length be increased by heating the streamers
with RF injected into the base of the coil?

Take a regular spark-gap TC and insert an RF transformer
into the base lead.   Apply CW drive through this
transformer, at the frequency of one of the resonator's
higher overtones.  The TC secondary will couple the
overtone signal to the top of the coil where it emerges at
not a very high impedance.  Some of this overtone current
will flow through the ionised leader channels.  Would this
extra RF current noticeably heat the spark channels, and
would this help to maintain ionisation?

If such heating occurs, is it enough to preserve the spark
channels between bangs?  If so, then can this help each
bang to build upon the ionised channels created by earlier
bangs, leading to brighter and longer spark output?

This has been suggested before in previous years, and I
don't think anyone has looked into it.   Maybe there are
practical or theoretical grounds for dismissing the idea?

Not that I'm planning on trying this, but perhaps an
experimentally minded list member might bite on this.
--
Paul Nicholson
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