RE: High midnight at the Texas corral

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

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <tesla729-at-cs-dot-com>

"Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com> wrote:

 >Original poster: "Bert Pool by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" 
<bert.tx-at-prodigy-dot-net>
 >
 >
 >>[snip]
 >
 >
 >
 >>  The 12" secondary is  closewound w/ #16 magnet
 >>wire and is only 38.5" tall but suffers NO racing sparks! I do
 >>have trouble with a lot of the strikes hitting at the shield
 >>ring around the primary coil though, due to its relative short
 >>height. I can get 8 to 10 ft. sparks with about 7 to 8 kVA in.

Bert Pool wrote:

 >It's hard to build a high performance coil as short as you describe and not
 >have racing sparks or spark related break-downs.  You must have it tuned
 >very well!


I'm not so sure about all that since I did have trouble with the
racing sparks until I optimized the coupling (loosened it up). I
ended up having to remove like the bottom 15 turns of the second-
ary along with the accompanying burn damaged cardboard sonotube
to correct the problem. The bottom-most secondary turn now sets
some 2.5" higher than the top of the primary coil but I now have
no more racing sparks on the secondary, just beautiful, bright 8
to 10 footers coming from the toroid :-)

 >>Also, how brilliant are your 15 ft. sparks? Are they as brilliant
 >>as the 12 footers from Bill's Warthog?

Bert Pool wrote:

 >It's hard to find a coil with sparks that bright.  Kevin's Biggg coil
 >manages to equal or excel that brightness.

Yep, that's what I love about pole pig power - big BRIGHT sparks:-)

David Rieben