Hi coilers. Life's been busy the last few months & not much time for
coiling, although I still read the pupman postings. Anyway, I did
find the time to roll out my coil tonight & run it, but I kept
running into on an old problem I've had in the past. Using a screw
or ball bearing for a breakout point, my 15/60 coil produces good
sparks, and the coil runs well with no problems. If I remove the
breakout, I still get sparks from the toroiod, but eventualy start
getting racing sparks. Without the breakout point, the coil seems to
have no trouble producing sparks from the topload even fairly lower
variac voltages, but when I increase variac the voltage to the 120 or
higher I eventually get the racing sparks. I've played around with
raising the secondary to reduce coupling, but so far, I'm still
getting racing sparks if I dont use a breakout.
If it's just a matter of over coupling, I'll have no problem
gradually raising the secondary to eliminate the problem. However
this will be somewhat involved as I have to removing the secondary's
end cap & adding a longer mounting bolt. Before I go much further, I
wanted to see if any of you guys had other suggestions on what might
be causing the racing sparks when I don't use a breakout. I'd really
like to be able to run the coil without using a breakout.
FYI, I have a 6 X 20.5 toroid and a 3 X 12 toroid underneath it.