RE: 1st coil running, but tuning issues..

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Original poster: "Mudford, Chris by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <chris.mudford-at-agresearch.co.nz>

Hi Brad

Sounds like your coil is pretty similar to mine at 6/30, although my cap
is 15 nF and that I have a flat primary and my spark gap has a fan
blowing over it.
I didn't do all the testing which you have done so can't give figures.
I took the "suck it and see" approach and ended up tuning at turn 2 (of
the 15 available, looks a bit silly really).  Anyway I managed about the
same performance as you at 10" to a grounded object and 8" to free air.
But note I think this performance was at over voltage in that I
rechecked all my safety gaps and particularly that over the capacitor
was too wide and after resetting them 2 minutes running had my MMC
starting to spit out flames from one capacitor.

Generally the comments I got back when asking the same question of
performance from a 6/30 were that 10" is about what to expect.  "Small
coils don't tend to follow the 1.7 x P^0.5 equation"

Cheers, Chris.  (NZ)