The International Cessna^® 170 Association

Well here is where the lightning left the bulding. Intersting that it split the 3/4 stone in half. No fire this time.....but I'm thinking maby I need to live some where else!

Bruce is looking for a good neighbor


w.

Hey Brad, Did I miss another description of when, where and what that photo describes? I have been too close to something much like what that looks like.

One late afternoon I was riding the crew bicycle across the ramp from one hangar to another at the TWA overhaul base in Kansas City. The air was muggy - sticky. I had just rounded the corner of the large hangar when a huge bolt of lightening struck a fellow employee who was jogging toward the parking lot. It had just begun to sprinkle large drops and he opened his umbrella and that is what the lightning hit first. He survived, but all his clothes and both shoes were shredded. His hand had a pretty severe burn from the melted plastic handle but other than that he was pretty good shape. The startling thing, other than his survival, was the huge hole in the concrete ramp! It blew out a conical depression about 3' in diameter and clear through the 12" thick slab into the gravel bed below. As for me I thought I was also dead. Pieces of the concrete were blasted in all directions and I still have the piece that hit me in the chest. That is close as I ever want to be to a lightening strike.

Perhaps it's time to install a lightning/diverter system on the building!

http://www.lightningsafety.com/nlsi_lhm/lpts.html

http://www.lightningrod.com/

gahorn wrote:Perhaps it's time to install a lightning/diverter system on the building!

http://www.lightningsafety.com/nlsi_lhm/lpts.html

http://www.lightningrod.com/

George, July third 2001 lightning hit my old shop and in a matter of about 15 seconds burnt every thing above four feet in a 120' by 60' building. (planes, motor home,tractors) I had the best lightning rod you could ask for attached to the shop.....A 50' TV tower with a wind sock on the top....The lightning missed it and hit the transformer on the pole 30' foot away and .....a trucker coming down the road said "a ball of fire went from there to the side of the building. I asked several insurance people about putting lightning rods on my buildings.....They all say it's a wast of money....lightning will do what ever it wants.

Brad, I don't have enough knowlege to disagree with that. Even the lightning-rod folks won't make any guarantees.

My hangar is an all-metal, flange-beam/I-beam welded construction, all-metal sheathed in R-panel, welded to plates sunk in the slab while still wet, tied to the rebar-grid inside the slab, and the welded framework grounded via 00-copper conductor to an 8-foot copper-clad grounding rod sunk fully to below the permanent moisture-level of the soil. It should be a pretty good Faraday-cage.

My house is less than 7 feet away, tied to the exact same electrical-grid. (In fact, my house supplies power to the hangar via overhead conductors.) It has an all-metal, R-panel roof, tied to cast-iron vent-pipes, buried into the soil, ...another imitation Faraday-cage.

I have personally observed lightning to strike the ground in my front yard and (turf) apron-area in front of the hangar...totally ignoring the hangar and house. I have twice seen lightning strike my "Cyclone" fencing surrounding my garden and dog-kennel (the shivering waste-of-good-dog=food inside the house, closely hugging my legs.)

My electrical-engineer bro-in-law asked me if I intended to install a diverter system (actually a dissipation system) and I responded, "Why fix what ain't broken?"

We live on a hill in the country and the biggest problem I've had with lightning in 20 years out here has been power failures and burnt-up electronics from power surges.

Yep, lightning is like tornadoes.....You just can't predict what they will do I've run into the same electrical problems you mentioned. It's just that the lightning just keeps getting closer ( the new shop is twenty five feet from the house..the old was 150').

gahorn wrote:Perhaps it's time to install a lightning/diverter system on the building!

http://www.lightningsafety.com/nlsi_lhm/lpts.html

http://www.lightningrod.com/

And here is the "JOKER" in the deck - - the disclaimer of any article on "Lightning"

" " There is no Utopia in lightning protection. Lightning may ignore every defense man can conceive. " "

Another crazy lightning story. . One night at our house on Bean Lake - rural Platte County MO, lightning hit the transformer across the gravel road from our house. It shook the house so hard I leaped right out of the bed. Amazingly enough it didn't knock out the electricity to any of the house. What it did was, somehow, come through the circuit to the dishwasher, blew the door of the d/w open, and caused the calrod drying element to explode and catch fire. The small fire was melting the coating in the tub near where the "rod" exploded, so without even thnking I closed the door to the d/w and started a rinse cycle to get water in the tub to put out the small fire. It worked Go figure that one out

[quote="flyguy...so without even thnking I closed the door to the d/w and started a rinse cycle to get water in the tub to put out the small fire. It worked Go figure that one out [/quote]

You bin drankin' agin! (White lightnin' probly...)