Re: Ed's striking problem

To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Re: Ed's striking problem
From: Esondrmn-at-aol-dot-com
Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 18:02:18 -0500 (EST)
Subscriber: Esondrmn-at-aol-dot-com Thu Jan 9 22:33:15 1997
In a message dated 97-01-09 01:21:22 EST, you write:

<< Ed,
 
 I seem to recall seeing pictures of your coil some time ago with the two
different
 diameter toroids stacked so that the bigger one is on the bottom, and then
you 
 were using a wire point to cause breakaway in a desired direction.
 
 Can you make a donut just a little bigger than your secondary , maybe 
 2-3 inches in total diameter greater with some small 3 inch diameter 
 aluminum flex duct. You will basically have to wind a single turn 
 with this stuff as tight as you can to work on your 6 inch coil.  You 
 might be better off finding some 2 inch diameter material for this.  
 I've seen a product in the stores which is a water plaything that 
 floats called a 'Water Noodle'.  It is flexible foamed plastic in 
 florescent colors about two inches in diameter and 4 feet or so 
 long.  You could take some of this, turn it into a tight circle and 
 cover it with adhesive aluminum tape.  You could also make a suitable 
 coil end field shaper by aluminum taping a couple of frisbees 
 together I guess.  We coilers will do whatever works, and is cheap.
   
 Mount it about 1-2 inches above the top winding, and then
 electrically connected in the same assembly, suspend your two larger
siamessed
 toroids (acting as a bigger single unit) maybe 6-10 inches spaced above the
first
 small diameter one.  In the upper unit, have the bigger diameter unit on 
 top.  Try this with a bleeder point to tune her up and after you've 
 got her tuned remove the bleeder point.  I hope you will find that 
 this will help throw streamers out and away from your coil while 
 reducing the strikes directly downwards.  If you implement this idea let me
 know what happens please. 
 
 rwstephens
  >>

rwstephens,

I think I have seen this on most of Richard Hull's coils.  If I understand
it, a small toroid mounted just above the secondary to provide shading to the
top of the coil then the massive toroid is raised up higher to get it away
from the secondary.  I have some small toroids (10 and 12") that I just made
for my new 3.0" coil.  I could mount one of these on the 6" then using a
metal spacer of say 12" (?) mount the larger toroids up on top.  Do I have
this correct?

I did try to fix this problem by laying a section of 3/8" clear tubing all
around the top outside edge of the 40" toroid and covering it with foil tape.
 The idea was to give it a smaller edge to breakout from, facing up and
outward from the coil.  It doesn't work too well at 5 to 7 kva.  It still
really likes the primary.

Ed Sonderman