The cupric oxide effects are also mentioned in the William Barabat patent application on Rex Research, paragraph 0004. I suspect that Don Smith was using nice shiny wire, especially the Duco coils, but we don't know if there was doping or not.
The V. Utkin's article linked above is excellent, thanks for that. My comments about trying to parallel resonate the very unlikely combination of a few turns of L1 with a large capacitor are maybe not relevant in light of the shorted transformer topology that Don used. If the output does not couple back to the input, then L1 is going to be operating at unloaded Q conditions, rather than the loaded Q which it sees in the conventional impedance matching circuit, and so may have some noticeable ringing response to a spark exciter.
The V. Utkin's article linked above is excellent, thanks for that. My comments about trying to parallel resonate the very unlikely combination of a few turns of L1 with a large capacitor are maybe not relevant in light of the shorted transformer topology that Don used. If the output does not couple back to the input, then L1 is going to be operating at unloaded Q conditions, rather than the loaded Q which it sees in the conventional impedance matching circuit, and so may have some noticeable ringing response to a spark exciter.
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