RE: What about this *Unique* Spark gap design??

["Richard Barton" <richardbarton-at-caving5.freeserve.co.uk> (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>)]

Hi
      Well, you would have yourself a rotary spark gap then, would you not ?
						Richard Barton.

-----Original Message-----
From: Tesla list [mailto:tesla-at-pupman-dot-com]
Sent: Monday, August 07, 2000 6:40 PM
To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: What about this *Unique* Spark gap design??


Original poster: "Garry F." <garryfre-at-pacbell-dot-net>

I've been thinking of someof the problems that I keep running into when
trying
to adjust my air cooled static spark gap.

The voltage required to start a spark, is much higher than that needed to
maintain a spark.

A wider gap provides better performance at the cost of needing more voltage
to
start the spark. NST's burn out and caps can get fried if this gap is too
wide.

If the current output of a NST isn't high enough, it can take longer to
charge
up the caps up to the voltage needed to jump the gap and sometimes results
in
tesla output that looks "Unsteady" as the cap charge time becomes long
enough
to be noticeable.

In other words, if I make the gap narrower, the output is diminished, but if
I
make it too wide, I get spotty output.

---

It seems to me that a rotating flat piece of metal between the gap, might
yield
good results IF the gap or rotating metal is adjusted so that the metal
piece
will narrow the gap to a point that a spark can be started, and as the flat
piece of metal rotates, the gap is widened to allow maximum distance between
the electrodes but not so wide that the NST or caps are fried.

I imagine that there would be an optimum rotational speed that might be
found
by varying the speed of the motor.

I wonder of anyone has tried this kind of spark gap.

It might work great, or might stink, hard for me to say unless I try it.