Re: stepped leaders

To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Re: stepped leaders
From: Malcolm Watts <MALCOLM-at-directorate.wnp.ac.nz>
Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1996 15:34:03 +1200

Hi all,
        I have a slight correction to my previous post and a new 
thought on spark behaviour.
      Firstly I wrote with reference to Abramyan's paper....

> graph showing efficiency vs system Q etc. It is VERY heavily 
> overcoupled at k=0.6 with Q's of 20 or so for both primary and 
> secondary to give total energy transfer from primary to secondary 

That should be Qp of 20, Qs of 70. Sorry :(


New thought - I closely examined a photo of an attached arc from my
coil. After banjo-ing and rising for a while, the spark was rather 
convoluted. 

edge of coil          main discharge channel = "s"
 |
 |           /
 |          /   <--- streamer starting to form
 |         s                      
 v       s   s                   /
___ sss         s     sss       s
   |              s s       sss   ss           ________________
   |                                 s        |  some object
   |                                   sss  ss|
   |                                       s  |
   

I noticed that at several of the peaks shown above there were free
air streamers just starting to break out ( up to several inches long).
I'm hazarding a guess that this is sucking energy out of the main
discharge channel causing it to weaken.

Perhaps,
Malcolm