[TCML] How Important is Location?

[Lau, Gary]

To make the mechanical adjustment is easy.  The thing that's difficult is to know when the adjustment is right.  If one was trying to determine if longer sparks result from operating at a higher altitude, it would be crucial to have the gap adjusted to the identical breakdown voltage.  The method that is (or should be) used to set the gap width is to have it just start to arc when only the NST is connected to the gap.  But performance will always improve with increasing gap width and breakdown voltage, and I suspect that setting the gap 10 times would result in 10 different breakdown voltages.  This is OK for just setting up a coil, but to definitively answer if a coil makes bigger sparks at high altitudes, careful measurement is needed.

Regards, Gary Lau
MA, USA

> -----Original Message-----
> From: tesla-bounces at pupman.com [mailto:tesla-bounces at pupman.com] On
> Behalf Of Alice
> Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2010 12:43 AM
> To: Tesla Coil Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [TCML] How Important is Location?
> 
> Hello Bob and everyone,
> 
> Thank you all for answering my question so clearly.  It does seem location
> does make a bit of difference.
> 
>  Gary said, "If using a static spark gap, assuming that no adjustment was
> made for altitude, the gap breakdown voltage for a given gap width will be
> lower at high altitudes.  This would result in a smaller "bang" size and
> lower performance, so to keep things equal, a high-altitude coil would need
> the gap width expanded to compensate."
> 
> Is this an easy thing....to tweek a screw or whatever to expand the spark
> gap?  (What I mean by easy is that only a simple adjustment is required, not
> the need to replace whole parts.)
>
> Thanks for the welcome, Bob.
> 
> Best wishes, Becky