Gap spacing with LTR cap

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Stacy Gillett by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <sgillett-at-hotmail-dot-com>

Hi List,

At the moment, I'm running my coil with a 0.012uF MMC, which is operating in 
resonant mode with my two 15/30 NSTs.  I'd like to try adding 0.006uF of 
bottle caps in parallel to give me an LTR cap (0.018uF total), so as to get 
the breakrate down and the energy per bang up.

Also, I run a fairly small gap (0.224") with my current cap, so as to 
protect the NSTs from being damaged by resonant rise.  My question is this: 
will using an LTR cap also allow me to run with a wider gap spacing without 
fear of my NSTs frying?

My understanding is that, with an LTR cap, opening up the gap to fire beyond 
the peak output voltage of the NST will only stop the spark gap firing, 
without damaging the NSTs.  However, if you did the same with a resonant 
cap, the gap would keep firing beyond the NST output voltage, until the 
insulation on one or both of the NST secondaries eventually failed from 
overvoltage.

Am I on the right track here?

Stacy Gillett
Melbourne, Australia
http://hot-streamer-dot-com/stacy

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