If you need assistance, please send an email to forum at 4hv dot org. To ensure your email is not marked as spam, please include the phrase "4hv help" in the subject line. You can also find assistance via IRC, at irc.shadowworld.net, room #hvcomm.
Support 4hv.org!
Donate:
4hv.org is hosted on a dedicated server. Unfortunately, this server costs and we rely on the help of site members to keep 4hv.org running. Please consider donating. We will place your name on the thanks list and you'll be helping to keep 4hv.org alive and free for everyone. Members whose names appear in red bold have donated recently. Green bold denotes those who have recently donated to keep the server carbon neutral.
Special Thanks To:
Aaron Holmes
Aaron Wheeler
Adam Horden
Alan Scrimgeour
Andre
Andrew Haynes
Anonymous000
asabase
Austin Weil
barney
Barry
Bert Hickman
Bill Kukowski
Blitzorn
Brandon Paradelas
Bruce Bowling
BubeeMike
Byong Park
Cesiumsponge
Chris F.
Chris Hooper
Corey Worthington
Derek Woodroffe
Dalus
Dan Strother
Daniel Davis
Daniel Uhrenholt
datasheetarchive
Dave Billington
Dave Marshall
David F.
Dennis Rogers
drelectrix
Dr. John Gudenas
Dr. Spark
E.TexasTesla
eastvoltresearch
Eirik Taylor
Erik Dyakov
Erlend^SE
Finn Hammer
Firebug24k
GalliumMan
Gary Peterson
George Slade
GhostNull
Gordon Mcknight
Graham Armitage
Grant
GreySoul
Henry H
IamSmooth
In memory of Leo Powning
Jacob Cash
James Howells
James Pawson
Jeff Greenfield
Jeff Thomas
Jesse Frost
Jim Mitchell
jlr134
Joe Mastroianni
John Forcina
John Oberg
John Willcutt
Jon Newcomb
klugesmith
Leslie Wright
Lutz Hoffman
Mads Barnkob
Martin King
Mats Karlsson
Matt Gibson
Matthew Guidry
mbd
Michael D'Angelo
Mikkel
mileswaldron
mister_rf
Neil Foster
Nick de Smith
Nick Soroka
nicklenorp
Nik
Norman Stanley
Patrick Coleman
Paul Brodie
Paul Jordan
Paul Montgomery
Ped
Peter Krogen
Peter Terren
PhilGood
Richard Feldman
Robert Bush
Royce Bailey
Scott Fusare
Scott Newman
smiffy
Stella
Steven Busic
Steve Conner
Steve Jones
Steve Ward
Sulaiman
Thomas Coyle
Thomas A. Wallace
Thomas W
Timo
Torch
Ulf Jonsson
vasil
Vaxian
vladi mazzilli
wastehl
Weston
William Kim
William N.
William Stehl
Wesley Venis
The aforementioned have contributed financially to the continuing triumph of 4hv.org. They are deserving of my most heartfelt thanks.
Registered Member #1521
Joined: Thu Jun 05 2008, 10:46AM
Location: Hungary
Posts: 128
I had this strange phenomeon long time ago with my magnifier, and I wasn't able to find any descriptions what can this be. So there is a little magnifier, powered by a small 350W NST with ARSG, and there is a strange situation, if I held a line shaped grounded object near the transmission line and the topload. -There are no breakout points, only shiny polished metal topload. -It happened more, when I built a lambda/2 magnifier -Once it was standing one place more than 10 seconds, diagonally. There is a video, showing 3 examples : Video If you look closely the #3 one, you can see strange"flaming" thick plasma, in real life it was thicker than my thumb! When this happens, the plasma tries to stay in one place, no matter what's the angle between the plasma line and the ground, which is very strange, considering the plasma is very hot. Any ideas?
Registered Member #162
Joined: Mon Feb 13 2006, 10:25AM
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 3140
speculation;
a question that has bugged me for a while is why do arcs jump about all over the place rather than remain in the shortest path to the nearest grounded object ? . hot air carries the ionised air upwards, but will break and the arc should (?) reform on the shortest path. . the path of the current carrying arcs will be 'bent' by the magnetic field of the primary current which rotates in phase due to resonant frequency 'splitting' with useful coupling ... probably not ! so my query is exactly yours but backwards.
I have never made a 1/2-wavelength magnifier but ... it would act as a very low turns ratio transformer once an arc is struck, allowing high arc currents, maybe enough to create plasma ? (briefly)
Possibly this has to do with the speed secondary voltage increases. Very slow rampup, such as in QCWs, leads to straight, non branching arcs. Fast rampup to heavily branching types. I'd suggest getting a scope shot from the secondary voltage by placing a probe safely away from the secondary. It would be interesting to find out, whether placing the line shaped object affects secondary voltage rise up speed.
When the arc grows its direction will be influenced by the direction of the electric field and the presence of hot air from the previous bursts. The field at the tip of an arc will have a preferred direction mostly away from the tip but there are also sideways components. For rapidly rising voltages, the direction will be more random, possibly dependent also from the presence of ions in the air.
Registered Member #1521
Joined: Thu Jun 05 2008, 10:46AM
Location: Hungary
Posts: 128
Sulaiman wrote ...
speculation;
a question that has bugged me for a while is why do arcs jump about all over the place rather than remain in the shortest path to the nearest grounded object ? . hot air carries the ionised air upwards, but will break and the arc should (?) reform on the shortest path. . the path of the current carrying arcs will be 'bent' by the magnetic field of the primary current which rotates in phase due to resonant frequency 'splitting' with useful coupling ... probably not ! so my query is exactly yours but backwards.
I have never made a 1/2-wavelength magnifier but ... it would act as a very low turns ratio transformer once an arc is struck, allowing high arc currents, maybe enough to create plasma ? (briefly)
This happens only when there is no connection from the plasma to the ground or any object, so only capacitive current can flow.
Registered Member #1521
Joined: Thu Jun 05 2008, 10:46AM
Location: Hungary
Posts: 128
Uspring wrote ...
Possibly this has to do with the speed secondary voltage increases. Very slow rampup, such as in QCWs, leads to straight, non branching arcs. Fast rampup to heavily branching types. I'd suggest getting a scope shot from the secondary voltage by placing a probe safely away from the secondary. It would be interesting to find out, whether placing the line shaped object affects secondary voltage rise up speed.
When the arc grows its direction will be influenced by the direction of the electric field and the presence of hot air from the previous bursts. The field at the tip of an arc will have a preferred direction mostly away from the tip but there are also sideways components. For rapidly rising voltages, the direction will be more random, possibly dependent also from the presence of ions in the air.
Well the base is a classical ARSG tesla system, with a resonant frequency about 300kHz, so the rampup should not be slow. BPS was around 500 I think (it's sensitive to the BPS actually). I don't have any reliable scope right now. I know how a spark, or arc is formed, but never seen anything like this on any other coils I built (from small to big ones, like 20), or have seen everywhere else, especially not from a spark gap based design. The most interesting thing for me is the change the thickness of the plasma, sadly the camera is not really good picking up intense UV light, especially with VGA resolution.
Registered Member #162
Joined: Mon Feb 13 2006, 10:25AM
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 3140
omegalabs wrote ...
Sulaiman wrote ...
speculation;
a question that has bugged me for a while is why do arcs jump about all over the place rather than remain in the shortest path to the nearest grounded object ? . hot air carries the ionised air upwards, but will break and the arc should (?) reform on the shortest path. . the path of the current carrying arcs will be 'bent' by the magnetic field of the primary current which rotates in phase due to resonant frequency 'splitting' with useful coupling ... probably not ! so my query is exactly yours but backwards.
I have never made a 1/2-wavelength magnifier but ... it would act as a very low turns ratio transformer once an arc is struck, allowing high arc currents, maybe enough to create plasma ? (briefly)
This happens only when there is no connection from the plasma to the ground or any object, so only capacitive current can flow.
if there is sound, light or heat then there must be a 'real' current, because there is real power, but my speculations above are NOT the answer to my question, I still do not understand why arcs or sparks frequently do not follow a consistent path to ground, even if only part of the way as in sparks but brush corona behaves 'logically'
Ionized air channels have persistence that exceeds the burst length of most coil setups. Because of this streamers can appear to persist along a particular ionization path simply because it IS the path of least resistance, even if there is a shorter distance to ground. Likewise, there is a time of persistence where an ionized air channel appears to glow longer than there is actually current passing through it, this is particularly prevalent at high discharge currents due to I2R heating of the air resulting in incandescence. The hotter the air channel the more ionization, the longer it persists, but also the more convection has an effect on its placement, so there is a sweet spot of current density that results in a nearly stationary streamer.
Well the base is a classical ARSG tesla system, with a resonant frequency about 300kHz, so the rampup should not be slow.
There is an energy transfer from the primary to the first secondary and from the first secondary to the second secondary. Both of these take time. For the first secondary it depends mostly on the coupling, for the second secondary on the voltage, the first secondary produces. In general I'd guess, that this is slower than for a non magnifier coil.
Sulaiman wrote:
I still do not understand why arcs or sparks frequently do not follow a consistent path to ground, even if only part of the way as in sparks but brush corona behaves 'logically'
Think of a partially grown arc and mentally replace it by a piece of wire connected to a high voltage source. There will be corona at the tip and it will look like a brush. The arc will follow any direction of the brush, not necessarily only the path of highest field. For a second or later burst it will tend to follow into the region of hot air. This is dictated by Paschens law: Hot air is thinner than cold air and thus reduces the breakdown voltage. I think the main difference between TC arcs and e.g. VDG (straighter) arcs is, that the latter are much faster and there is not so much time to transfer charge to the tip of the arc. Therefore the field is much less influenced by the local charge at the tip so it will follow mostly the field, that was there before the arc ignited, i.e. the straightest path.
This site is powered by e107, which is released under the GNU GPL License. All work on this site, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License. By submitting any information to this site, you agree that anything submitted will be so licensed. Please read our Disclaimer and Policies page for information on your rights and responsibilities regarding this site.
"Standing streamer"
