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Re: TC Critical Coupling (was Overcoupling



Hi Terry,

> Original Poster: Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>

<snip> 
>     One very interesting thing that shows really how messy output arcs are is
> this:  If I measure to output waveforms on an oscilloscope,  I can judge,
> from the ringing, what the losses in the system are.  If the losses rise,
> the ringing is lessened.  Better yet, given a waveform, I can reproduce
> them with models to find what the loss is.  However, if I look at the
> losses when the system is running before breakout (no arcs) and when the
> system is pushing nice three foot streamers, the losses are not that much
> greater.  In other words, the streamers seem to add little loss to the
> system.  In fact I can account for most of the electrical loss in the
> system just in the spark gap and primary loss.  No doubt, there is current
> going into the streamers and some power too, but just as capacitors draw
> current without loss, I am suspecting that streamers are really not
> dissipating very much power.  Certainly not the hundreds of watts I am
> pushing into the system.  I am beginning to think that the terminal
> geometry and fields around the terminal have a far greater effect on
> streamers than simply how much power is going into them (such as the larger
> vs smaller terminal).  Perhaps, we are seeing more dielectric breakdown in
> the terminal's space capacitance rather than power into a resistor.  I
> suspect that one would want to heat one's house with the spark gap.  If you
> depended on streamers for heat, you may freeze...

Air streamers do not dissipate much power according to my observations
but attached streamers can rapidly suck nearly everything from the 
secondary in short order. Perhaps if we started by specifying a 
streamer length together with brightness we would be designing the
innards of a black box (which might or might not be a Tesla Coil)
to do this :)

Malcolm