Now the thing to be worried about is St. Elmo's Fire... I have read some
strange things on this phenomenon, including a seasoned aircarrier pilot
seeing a floating ball of blue light which passed right through him.... Go
check it out your self..
http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/...lightning.html
"Jim Knoyle" wrote in message
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"Rowbotth" wrote in message
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OK, but all of these verify what I think I know about lightning - it is
a very high frequency phenomena and will tend to only flow through the
skin of the conductor. So while it may mark or weld exterior
attachments, interior "stuff" - instrumentation; people; etc. will be
quite safe.

(And as for the wooden or plastic aircraft, wouldn't the qualities of an
aircraft to attract lightning in the air be mostly to be a better
conductor than non-ionized air? And mostly for cloud to cloud strikes?
So I'm unclear on how good an electrical conductor this stuff would be.
And how about titanium - like in "Blackbird"?)


Tend to agree with you as for the safety of the passengers but an
occasional lightning strike helped keep us avionics types employed,
not to mention the A&P and his sheetmetal skills. He also may get
to degauss a windshield frame or some area that can put a very
noticeable error into the standby magnetic compass. If a localized
degaussing won't handle the problem, moving the whole aircraft into
a special degaussing area should. Then we'd get to re-swing the
compass(s).
My knowledge may be a bit dated. Welded radar scanners and
zapped radar receiver crystals may be something that is not a
problem with newer designs that use much less radiated power.
I've replaced a bunch of HF radio lightning arrestors after a strike
rendered those systems inop but I wouldn't be surprised to learn
that SatCom has replaced HF radio. I don't know.
Anybody noticed any of those long trailing antennae from the tips
of the wings of newer overwater 747s? With other AC usually
using the vert stab leading edge, it's harder to spot. Guess I'll just
tune up some of our old company freqs on my scanner.
Bottom line: They have two or three (or more) of all the important
bits on the aircraft.

JK ( Just tuned in 5,574 Mhz HF and heard the old familiar SelCal )