"Mike Coslo" wrote

/snip/

I went on a tour of a TV station tower site last year, and they had a
lightning suppression system that had a number of rods with a lot of
fine metal (wires?) hanging off the ends - they looked a bit like a
cheerleaders pom-pom. The individual rods hung from the sides of that
tower at various heights on the tower. Height was either 1000 or 1200
foot IIRC.

And yes, it did protect the area around the tower.

- Mike KB3EIA -

Mike,

The IEEE has nearly succeeded in quashing once and for all, the last ditch
efforts of a desperate group of snake-oil salesmen pushing Early Streamer
Emission (ESE) and Charge Transfer System (CTS) phony-science. The latest
trick of these junk-science purveyors was to hire corrupt Russian scientists
to publish "findings" that the ESE/CTS systems worked. Every other lightning
expert in the world has rung-in on this already, and the theory is totally
discredited, and without merit.

That didn't stop some engineers at various plants and stations around the
world from trying the systems those CTS snake oil salesmen pushed. The
system you described on that tower is CTS. And it never worked, anywhere.
Anyone who still defends it today is too embarrassed to admit they paid
upwards of 10x the cost of proven Franklin-rod lightning systems, for a
totally discredited design that leaves them dangerously exposed to damage
from lightning (if it was the only protection system).

Jack Painter
Virginia Beach, Virginia