I am very curious.

Having taken at least six direct lightning strikes on our two Beech Barons
way back when, plus another eight I know of during my service as the marine
telegraph operator for Texas A&M University's RV Hidalgo oceanography
ship,plus two direct hits adjacent to me on the streets of downtown
Houston, plus one direct hit on my car in high school driving to it to
school one morning .. plus dozens of direct hits on our tower as Chief
Engineer of WTAW here way back when .. plus at least one direct hit a year
on my major ham radio antenna farm at W5WQN since 1976 out there (with no
significant damage once I got the engineering mitigation work done in 1978
or so) - I have a pretty good experience with lightning.

Now .. as I notice the new tecniques with the Airbus .. and the new Boeing
aircraft which are either significantly topside carbon fiber or all fiber
outside constructed such craft ..

     What is the future for these craft relative to direct hits by
     lightning?

And don't just say radar gets you avoidance room all the time. Sometimes
you just ain't got no choice.  As well, life can be fun.

On of my most interesting flights in N7826R was from Indiana to Texas
during a scenario where there were hundreds of little cells growing up
through the solid level cloud layer for hundreds of miles.  The freezing
level was right at the top of the level layer beneath us where I was VFR on
top and by agreement sort of free to have fun.  These hundreds of little
actually active cells looked just like a whole pinball table, the little
anvil tops were very low in total, just like pinball lights flashing all
around us!.

Many people do not realize that the only real electrical charge effect of
several that can result in enough voltage and current capicity differential
to produce a lightning stroke is the shearing of freezing raindrops as the
updraft carries them through the freezing level.  As well they don't think
carefully about the issue of feeler strokes,charge differential areas which
can 'upset' the major charge differential in a given cell and so on.

But to prove a point, with my one passenger aboard who was stunned by what
he saw, I flew over close to one of these tiny anvil tops and nudged it
with the Baron!  It produced a discharge stroke in the anvil head!  But not
a hit to the aircraft which was above the hit area and the major charge
differential toward ground.

We went for hundreds of miles that 1970 odd day tipping off anvil after
anvil, just like a pool ball hitting bumpers on a pool table!  From which I
really did get a good etch in my memory and my passenger will never forget
that ride either.

But .. how in the devil are they going to protect these new passenger
aircraft?  From the issue that lightning is really a RADIO WAVE and travels
over the SURFACE of the (metal) conductor.  And NOT inside the wire or in
the central part of the metal shell that is the fuselage and the wings and
so on of a normal aircraft I know?

Inquiring mind wants to know.

Don't argue that clear air is safe.  I, as I kid in the ninth grade in high
school here in College Station, Texas, got to do the wiring harnesses for
the first weather radar sets ever sent out in the USA.  As well as build
the first color weather radar ever built.  As well as in those years I also
got to build the very first double huge shielded coax cable loop antenna
array and oscilloscope monitor on an X/Y coordinate vs. vertical antenna
phase comparator, to do the very first ever lighting trace receiver!  From
which all the stuff you see on TV weather casts and all the aircraft
lighting trace stuff came!  That was in 1959 here in the back yard of my
mentor, Dr, George Huebner, who dreamed the thing up, on Walton Drive here!

Decades later after solid state stuff made it possible to file all the
pulse data and directions and ranges into computers, we know that, at this
point in the logs, the farthest a bolt has ever traveled in clear air to
kill people was in Colorado.  Over twenty miles parallel to the ground from
the cell of origin.  Through totally clear air.  To a golf course where it
hit players out on the course, killing a player there on the way to sink
it's charge into the turf of the golf course.  FORE!

So don't tell me that, "We'll just keep away from it!", with this
new construction style of aircraft with hundreds of people at risk an no
surface metal shell around them to keep the charge on the outside of the
metal away from them?

Inquiring mind wants to know.


--> Sleep well; OS/2's still awake! ;)

Mike {at} 1:117/3001

--- Maximus/2 3.01