Re: Terry's DRSSTC - Experiment - A curious thing...

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Original poster: Terry Fritz <teslalist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Hi All,

I tried my experiment and found something very odd!!

I was running small streamers (~8 inches) here in the basement off a sharp 
tip on the terminal.

The 1, 2, 3... pulse thing did not seem too interesting.  After about 5 to 
10 pulse the streamers seem to reach a maximum level.  After that they just 
last longer but their length does not increase....

But one thing that certainly did get my attention was this.

After about 400 BPS and certainly from 600 - 1000 BPS the streamer length 
"cyclically" goes from a small brushy discharge to a long single streamer 
as a function of BPS.  Sort of like this:

500BPS = short sparks
550BPS = long single arc
600 BPS = short sparks
700 BPS = long single arc
.
.
.

Those are not really the exact numbers, but just increasing the BPS say 
from 660 to 690 increased the length of the streamers about 5X!!  Then 
increasing the BPS further to 720 made the streamers fall back to the short 
discharge again!  It is almost like the streamer length is going through 
nodes and anti-nodes as the BPS is increased.

I don't "think" it is anything in the electronics.  There is nothing to 
really cause it on the controller side.  I just used 20 pulses all the time 
at fixed pulse width (35mS) so the total power is pretty much the 
same.  Only the BPS rate of the 20 pulse bursts was changed.

I was wondering if the L and C of the streamer was resonating or 
something.  But I could not imagine how that could be...  It certainly did 
seem like the long streamers "go in and out of tune"....  You could adjust 
the BPS to maximize the length....

If it is a real repeatable effect, it may have been easily lost in a 
conventional spark gap type coil's erratic operation.  The DRSSTC with 
computer control can easily pick out this effect.  I can change the BPS 
from like 700BPS to 701BPS without changing any things else and run like 
that for hours!  It is really strange running coils by computer!!  But the 
level of control and repeatability is astounding!!

So curious if anyone has ever noticed streamer length dramatically coming 
and going buy changing BPS a little at the above 600BPS level?

Cheers,

	Terry