Plasmatron, Power Booster?

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Original poster: "Harold Weiss by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <hweiss-at-new.rr-dot-com>

Hello All,

I just came up with a srtange idea.  I remember reading somewhere, ( I.T.S. 
Symposia, I think.) about an experiment leading up to the Plasmatron.  I 
think this was done in the Soviet Union.  Anyway, they set up a circuit of 
a spark gap in series with a load of 4 220V lamps, two lamps in series, two 
parallel legs.  The spark gap was closed, and 220V applied.  The lamps 
would glow at half brightness.  Then the gap was opened enough to keep a 
constant arc.  All 4 lamps then came to full brightness.  This is supposed 
to work at voltages between 200 and 2KV.  I know they went off and started 
talking about free energy, but thinking about this, I am wondering if the 
gap is working like an LTR cap.

I know we use LTR caps to suck extra energy out of NSTs.  Why couldn't this 
be used to feed a resonant cap coil?  It would be easy to put in a series 
gap off of the xfmr.  The only problem is the top end of the effect at 
2KV.  This might work for a 2KV MOT powered coil.  But I am not sure if the 
voltage is high enough to make a coil work well.

I think I just came up with a good winter project!

David E Weiss