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Re: Racing Spark Prediction



Original poster: "Barton B. Anderson" <bartb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Hi Dimitry,

Tesla list wrote:

Original poster: dest <dest@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Hallo Bart.

> Original poster: "Barton B. Anderson" <bartb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

> On my large 13" diameter coil, I witnessed racing sparks
> running down from the top then abruptly arcing at 2/3 down the coil
> right out to the strike ring.

interesting, i`ve never read about racing sparks at the upper 1/3 of
sec - certainly not transformer action at work here : ) looks like
simple surface tracking, maybe toroid was too high, or it`s surface
had direct electrical contact with the outer surface of secondary?

The arc tracked straight down the side of the coil then suddenly broke out to the strike ring. I witnessed that occur several times. This was in my early coiling days and nothing was quite "right". It could have been tuning, or whatever, but I will never forget it. Haven't seen it since (maybe I'm learning something?).

it seems these days we need not just a scope, and not just a storage
scope - we need a usb scope plus pc with raid of say 1tb to observe
what`s going on really, luckily such stuff is not rare or very
expensive these days : )

>  BTW, I no longer use a strike ring.

that`s good subj for whole another topic % )
Oh yes, and maybe this past week, I found a reason to use one (finally!). I was taking some snap shots of my little coil for someone and I was getting many primary strikes. Well, all of a sudden, the coil just stopped work. All was silent. I figured I had killed one side of my NST. I quickly shorted to a narrow gap and it worked. I then hooked up my HV divider to the NST and measured each side. One was 6,300 volts and the other ZERO! So yes, I killed the NST. Maybe a strike ring would have prevented it.

I'm writing a paper on my depotting experience for this NST. OH, the fun I had!!! Anyway, the coil is up and running again and much better than before!!! I'll post my NST depotting experience later. BTW, due to field control, I haven't had a primary strike since rebuilding the NST. I may still force myself to add a strike ring however.

Take care,
Bart