RE: unwanted breakout

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

You don't need to "secure" the ball to the top as such....
I've fixed a metal ring onto the top cap.... any ball or
toroid sits in the top of this ring (which is about 3" across)
quite securely... after all, you are not going to be moving
the thing around while it's running.
I get the "single streamer" from my coil, and it's very good
to see it roaring. You need very still air, and no draught.
To prevent the breakout from the top turns, I think you should
try increasing the length of the primary and/or increasing your
capacitance.
						Rich.

-----Original Message-----
From: Tesla list [mailto:tesla-at-pupman-dot-com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2000 8:03 PM
To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: unwanted breakout


Original poster: "sundog" <sundog-at-timeship-dot-net>

  Hi all,

  I've been wanting to see the "single streamer" phenomenon using a
spherical topload (thanks Dave!), but here's the problem.

  I'm running a 3" diameter metal sphere on a 2" PVC form.  ~1000 turns of
32ga wire.  A 9/60 with 12.9nf.  Sync gap -at-240bps.  Once tuned, it runs
beautiful, tons of streamers, but a goodly chunk of them are coming off of
the top turn of the secondary. :(  That's robbing a lot of power.   Would a
toroid to help shield the top windings be possible and still get the
discharge from the sphere?

  Also, how in the world do you secure a foil-wrapped basketball to the top
of a secondary?  (don't want to try this on the 2" form, but maybe on the 4"
coil.

   												Caio!
											Sundog