Electronic gap-quenching?

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

Original poster: "K. C. Herrick by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <kchdlh-at-juno-dot-com>

While noodling around with simulation, I hit on a prospective electronic
method for quenching gaps.  The notion is to insert a damping resistance
into the primary circuit at the appropriate time, using transistors.

I simulated a 500-turn, 50 mH secondary and a 3-turn primary with
primary:secondary coupling of 0.15.  The primary damping resistance was 1
ohm (in a relatively low-powered circuit) and the shorting-circuit across
the 1 ohm resistance had 20 m-ohm resistance.

It happens that a long time back I'd developed (in hardware: it works!) a
simple 1-transistor circuit for sensing when the spark commences.  It
connects into the secondary's return circuit.  One could use that for
sensing when to start a timing process leading up to the electronic
quenching.

I'll prevail on Terry to post http://hot-streamer-dot-com/temp/spk-damp1.pdf
and http://hot-streamer-dot-com/temp/spk-damp2.pdf.  Those are
simulation-waveforms of primary current and secondary voltage, for one
spark-event, with and without such damping inserted.  Green curves are
with & red are without.  The damping resistance is inserted at 38.88 ms
and shorted out again 300 us later.

Would this notion be worth pursuing, do you suppose?

Ken Herrick