I've been having a lot of fun with my plasma circuit. Using a single MOT primary as the inductor I'm getting flame like sparks shooting out from the spark gap. These finger sparks are even shooting off the electrode itself, about a quarter inch from the gap's arc. And when this happens it doesn't have any effect on the arc itself. Which electrode throws the extra sparks depends on the diode polarity.
And I did do some more water cell experiments. I built another one slightly smaller than half as big as the one I was using, but no bubbles. I guess I got lucky and the big one had about the right amount of capacitance. So I decided to make the smaller one into a variable capacitor, by using a C Stack geometry. (See patent #4,179,627). I used galvanized mesh for the two grids - which seems to be holding up without corrosion, using well water - and I placed the central electrode in a small water filled plastic tube for insulation. The second insulated electrode is some more mesh around the outside of the cell. By the patent, applying a potential to the insulated electrodes increases the amount of energy the water cell itself can hold. With the cell electrodes hooked to the floating load coil, and the insulated electrodes tied across the spark gap, there were bubbles, although nothing spectacular. When I went back to the first cell and added the outer grid, the bubble production fell way off. Too much capacitance. And I couldn't insulate the central electrode since that cell's all sealed up.
Now I'm going to start doing some advanced experiments with the shooting arc. And I haven't forgotten that I was once strongly advised by an insider that sometimes certain kinds of tests should be done remotely.
