Re: Staccato coil operational- Thanks y'all

[FutureT-at-aol-dot-com (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>)]

In a message dated 9/13/00 8:38:27 PM Pacific Daylight Time, tesla-at-pupman-dot-com 
writes:

> Original poster: cwillis-at-guilford.edu 
>  
>  
>  Actually what was happening with my flashover was a wiring problem:  I 
left 
> out
>  a resistor in the AC phase in divider!  Got that fixed, and I still get
>  basically the same operation but without the flashover.  I don't seem to 
get
>  the "swordlike" spark that you describe, John, but rather I am still 
getting 
> a
>  brush with a few branches, like four or five. 

Carl,

I've seen those spark knots too in my coil sparks at times.  I'm glad
the arc-over is stopped now, and that your new tubes arrived.  The
swordlike sparks only appear on certain ones of my tube coils.  The
large coil that gave 3 foot sparks, tended never to give the swordlike
sparks, but the small one that gives 19 to 24" sparks always wants
to produce the swordlike sparks.  I notice that the coils that give
the swordlike sparks also give straighter sparks in normal operation
too, so this can be affected by tuning also.  But other factors affect
it too; maybe the coil Q, or aspects to do with the oscillator stability,
and feedback characteristics, and circuit characteristics, etc.

John Freau