[TCML] Stuck at 36"

[Tesla]

At 00:39 2009-01-11, you wrote:

Hi Bill.

>Hello everyone, first time here (great site!).  I've built a coil 
>that refuses to put a streamer past 36" to a grounded plate 
>suspended vertically at the top of the secondary.  Occassionally 
>I'll get one 41-42".
>
>I'm using NST's 1 at 60Ma 7.5kv 4 at 30Ma 7.5kv all hooked together.  I 
>think they're all okay because if I remove any one of them from the 
>system performance diminishes.
>
>The secondary coil that I've had the best luck with is wound on a 
>5-1/4" varnished paper tube winding length 22-1/2" the wire is .014 
>or #27 magnet it's 1,607 turns 2,208 feet.
>
>My capacitors are a mixed batch of homemade HDPE plate type.

This is of course an economical issue but my experience is that you 
will get better results with commercial capacitors(MMC's, big pulse 
caps etc) so this might help a bit.

>My spark gap is a segmented type with 10 copper tubes 7/8 OD 5" long 
>total space between gaps is .150" just enough so the transformers can break.
>The gap is also blown with a fan.

You could try with a single(gap) sucker/blower gap. My experience is 
also that the single gaps have yielded better performance than multiple gaps.

Also, you could try adjusting pri inductance and cap size to see if 
that can squeeze a little bit of extra spark out of you coil.

Regards
/Matt