From: Jeremy Gassmann <jeremyee78@xxxxxxxxx>
Hello everyone,
Happy new year! To celebrate the new year this year, I gave a demo of
my coil to some friends (and neighbors if they were watching). I was
actually able to do it outside for the first time and tried taking off the
breakout point since I wasn't concerned where the streamers came out. When
I did this, however, I began getting racing sparks up the secondary. I
know
that removing the breakout point increases the top load voltage by a
certain amount but I was surprised that it gave me the racing sparks issue
as I thought that was related to the primary-secondary coupling. So I
guess
my question is...is it better to use a breakout point or can you typically
get longer streamers without it since the voltage would be higher? How do
I
fix the racing sparks issue in the no breakout case? Simply raise the
secondary some? Or would adding a smaller toroid under my main toroid but
closer to the secondary help control the fields some? I know I would have
to retune the primary some in this case but thought it might be worth it.
Or would it even be better to just use the smaller top load?
Here is a quick description of my coil: NST driven (15 kV, 120 mA total),
0.04 uF MMC, 8" x 36" secondary, large top load is 7" x 29" and smaller
toroid is 4" x 22", spark gap is a synchronous rotary gap. If I missed any
thing, please let me know. Thanks a lot in advance!
Jeremy Gassmann
Cincinnati, Oh