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Re: Better Gap Worth Effort

At 12:35 PM 04/29/2000 -0400, you wrote:
>In a message dated 4/29/00 12:12:59 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
>tesla-at-pupman-dot-com writes:
>
>> Do you think or know if the gap losses with a multiple spark gap are more
>>  than the first notch gain. Theoretical first notch quenching would be three
>>  times more efficient as let's say quenching at the third notch (assumed no
>>  extra gap losses and secondary in sparking condition), wouldn't it?
>>  
>>  Greetings from Holland,
>>  
>>  Ruud de Graaf
>
>Ruud,
>
>Assuming no extra gap losses, I don't see why it would matter
>much if it was 1st notch or 3rd notch (of course there *would* be
>extra gap losses using 3rd notch quenching because the gap would
>be firing for a longer time).  But since you specified, "assuming no
>extra gap losses", how do you figure that the 1st notch quench
>would be 3 times more efficient?  You're not following the Corum's
>viewpoints are you?  The Corums would agree with you that 1st
>notch quenching is of the utmost importantance, because they believe
>that the energy that is in the secondary at the time of quench
>determines the spark length, but experiments by myself and others 
>have disproven this. 
>
>Did I misunderstand what you are saying perhaps?
>
>Cheers,
>John Freau
>

Hi John and Rudd,

	If a coil is able to support an air streamer over several notches, then
trapping the energy in the secondary with a first notch quench may have
some advantage if the gap was not terribly lossy.  However, if the streamer
load basically discharges the system in the first notch (that impedance
matching stuff), then first notch quenching will not matter since the
effective streamer energy is all used in the first notch anyway.

	I have been trying to use very low loss gaps that do not quench well but I
try to get all the streamer energy expended in the first notch too.  By the
time the second notch comes around, the energy has all been used up anyway
so it does not matter.

http://users.better-dot-org/tfritz/site/misc/Ruud02.gif

Shows how my little LTR coil is tuned to "do its thing" all in the first
notch.  It does not matter if the gap quenches in the first notch or not
since the energy is gone by the time that would make any difference.

Cheers,

	Terry