Interesting point, BUT! In one of Tesla's published comments he
specifically mentions an interesting property of a bipolar coil
setup. I can't remember if he shows a schematic indicating one gap
and the two primaries in series but think he does. Unfortunately it's
in my bookcase at work and can't look it up but have often cited the
page to my radar colleagues who thing that 'pulse compression is a
modern invention'. Anyhow, what he says is that by varying the tuning
[relative frequency] of the two coils he can produce any spark sound
he wants including the very sharp sound that one would expect of a
Wimshurst machine spark. Whether he ever ran the experiment or "just
knew it would work" [he had remarkable intuition] he's essentially
correct. If there is any frequency difference between the voltage on
the two secondaries there will be periodic times at which the voltages
between them double. For example, if one coil is tuned to 100 kHz and
the other to 101 kHz the two signals would add up to double 1000 times
a second. One form of generating sharp pulses which is in use today
involves adding a number of identically-spaced voltages. For example,
with 10 voltages the peak voltage difference is ten times that of a
single one. No average power gain of course.
Ed
Lau, Gary wrote:
There's a lot more to determining the relative phase of two Tesla
coils than the direction of the windings. Even if the two gaps were
completely synchronized (which will NEVER happen), consider that if
the two secondary systems differ in frequency by any amount (which
will ALWAYS be the case), the phase will be out of whack in just a
couple of cycles.
But to your question, I don't think there's any hazard to allowing
them to arc to one another, and that their NST's are different
doesn't enter into it at all.
Regards, Gary Lau
MA, USA
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