Odd/errratic TC behavior. Why?

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Original poster: "jpeakall by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <jpeakall-at-mcn-dot-org>

Howdy All,

I made a vacuum gap like I saw on Gary Lau and Greg's (hotstreamer) site.
Wow! Easy to make (less than 3 hr.) and works great. Much better output!
Only trouble is, I was having so much fun, I blew a tank cap.

Enter my problem. I have a .025 (actually tests to .023) RRI cap. In spite
of the fact it is too big for my 15kv/60ma, I hooked it up, and trying all
primary tap points and gap settings. I got a little, with it tuned to 1-2
primary turns, but that was it. I wasn't really surprised, as that tranny
shouldn't really run it anyway, but it didn't act like a too big tank cap
has for me in the past (erratic SG behavior). It was firing fine over a
range of SG adjustments, just no secondary output. When I tune the primary
really low, I get some yellow sparks off the top of the tank cap.

So I pulled out my 12kv/120ma that I have for my new system I am building. I
was a little concerned, as my coil is small, and I thought I'd have to run
at low power, as the .025 is close to a res cap for this tranny. Anyway, to
make a long story short, same deal. I tried gaps from .25 to .05. Nada. What
gives? It fires the gap great. One thing I did notice is that the 12kv/120ma
needed a SMALLER setting on the safety gap. Is this sucker just weak? It
does seem to have more ooomph once it jumps the gap, but won't jump as far.
In spite of the lesser voltage, I expected it to jump further than the
15kv/60.

I'm gonna go take a look at info to hook my two NSTs together tonight and
try it out. I have friends visiting this weekend that wanna see my coil!
Must..get....coil.....working.

Thanks All,

Jonathan Peakall