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Some tests with a 2.25" coil



As some of you know, I have been fighting a few battles with my system -
one of which is protecting my door opener :)

The other one has been working with my *expletive* capactitor safety gap.
Since I could not run as high power, I grabbed one of my old coils
to stick in the primary as a load.. it happened to be my 2.25 x 12"
coil, wound with 28AWG wire. I threw my old 3"x10" toroid on there
mostly to get to where I could at least use a few turns of my primary.
The little coil looked lost in there :) [ 8.5" inner turn for my 6.5"
coil]

Specs for test:
2.25x12 Coil, with 3x10 Topload.
Main Gap 0.175
Cap Gap 0.470
Power source: 14.4 Pig, with input voltage limited to 100V (12KV output)
               1100VA limiting in place.

Doing short runs (under 5 seconds) things were fine. Produced anywhere from
2-6 14" streamers. After I got things tuned up I let the system run for a
bit
(about 20 seconds) when my cap safety gap started to go nuts. I checked my
main
gap, and the pipes were *HOT* (my kids had broken my fan plenum - so the air
was not ducted to my RQ gap.) So I got curious. I let it cool down, and
fired
up the coil.. things ran fine for about 30 seconds... then *bang* the
safety gap fires.. Again, the gap is hot.

I am speculating that the poor quenching caused by the overheated gap is
playing
a role in the problems I am seeing with my safety gap, can any of you
give some additional information in support of or against this idea?
The only other possiblity (which I have not been able to test yet, wife made
me shut down because of the noise) is that the new enclosure I built for my
caps is harboring ionized air from the cap gap.. and that this eventually
leads
to the breakdown.

Michael Baumann
Coiler, Homebrewer, Nerd. mycroft-at-access1-dot-net