On 19 Oct 2004 09:32:10 EDT, am (Gary V.
Deutschmann, Sr.) wrote:
It was hit and hit hard when neither tower was hit.

Hi Gary,

If lightning strikes a tower, and it doesn't burn down, did any power
dissipate? (Apologies to the trees falling in the forest cliche.)

How did your team "know" what was struck?

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC

Hi Richard

If you recall, I lost a tower to a lightning strike.
Took us forever to figure out why it came down, but we finally did.
Water built up in the leg of the tower, the lighting turned the water
to steam causing the leg to explode.

In some minor cases we found the places where lightning struck through
burn and/or pit marks combined with visual observations of bystanders!
Other times, the foot long melted out section of guttering was a dead
giveaway along with the distortion of the rest of the guttering to
ground.

TTUL
Gary

Gary Deutschmann wrote:
"If you recall, I lost a tower to a lightning strike."

Yes. I was saddened by Gary`s misfortune.. My recollection of the event
is that the tower was aluminum. It seems there may have been a poor
electrical connection between tower sections which generated first great
heat. There was a lightning induced failure of one of the tower legs, if
I remember.

The commercial towers erected by one of the companies I worked for, all
had a copper cable about like a welding or jumper cable riunning the
length of the tower, connecting the top plate to the ground system for
the tower. Deep ground rods were connected to each tower leg.

I encountered these towers upon joining the company. I would not have so
specified those tower-length cables in those big steel towers, but it
must have worked as we never had any lightning damage to the towers. In
Gary`s case, such a cable might have prevented a melt-down.

Best regards, Richard Harrison, KB5WZI

On 20 Oct 2004 12:21:27 EDT, am (Gary V.
Deutschmann, Sr.) wrote:
In some minor cases we found the places where lightning struck through
burn and/or pit marks combined with visual observations of bystanders!
Other times, the foot long melted out section of guttering was a dead
giveaway along with the distortion of the rest of the guttering to
ground.

Hi Gary,

By this, I suppose you to mean that any report of strikes to a tower
were those chance occurrences of being seen as a direct hit, and no
one regularly inspected all metal structures for evidence after a
storm to verify unobserved strikes.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC

Hi Richard

I was just a lowly sophomore peon in a class of mostly upperclassmen
who had started the project a few years before I went to skewl there.

The project was a side assignment for extra credit that just seemed to
carry on for all the years I was there and a few years thereafter.

I was an avid model railroader quite adept at building miniature
structures to emulate their full sized counterparts.
This was my contribution to the project, the modeling end of it.
When a new building was built in the town, I would make a scale model
of it for the project layout board.
I had to pay special attention to what objects of a structure
consisted of metal components and how they were attached to the
structure and if they led to a grounding source, as all of these
factors played an important part in the experimentation that was going
on.

I knew what the project was about and what they were trying to prove
with it. But I truly was not that interested in the purpose of the
project as much as I was in the authenticity of detail in the
structures used on the project layout board.

In other words, I learned just enough to be dangerous in my
observations, hi hi.....

However, the success ratio of known lightning strikes to the red zones
on our layout board was phenominal.
The data was collected by a whole different team than the team I was
on, but the layout board was loaded with bright orange lightning bolts
glued to places of known lightning strikes and all but 2 of them were
in our red zones.

I should note that a red zone was simply a 1/8 to 1/4 inch wide line
drawn on for example, the edges of gutters, at certain elevations on
taller structures not shielded by another object.

Naturally we did not know about many lightning strikes that did no
damage or were not observed.

My own antenna farm has been hit several times, but never was their
any damage because of it.

In fact, one year we had a strange phenomenon that caused neighbors to
call the fire department on a couple occassions. One of my Yagi's
appeared to have orange sparks flying from it, sometimes for as long
as a half-hour, but usually only for a few seconds or minutes. I was
only priviledged to see this myself in person one time. Scared the
bejesus out of me when I did too!

One of the firemen knew a man who worked on tall commercial chimneys
or something like that and told him about it.
The many came to my house, checked a few things out, talked to a
couple of neighbors and showed them some photo's he had taken of a
similar phenominon on other structures.
Turns out what was happening was weather conditions and the charge in
the air was just right to cause what was termed as St. Elmo's Fire, a
phenominon discovered on old sailing ships at sea during a storm.

I lived in that house roughly 20 years and this only happened for one
short rainy season in only one of those years. I had never heard of a
similar occurrance to ham antenna's before or after this event.
And I've been licensed for 45 years!

TTUL
Gary

Gary Deutschmann wrote:
"Turns out what was happening was weather conditions and the charge in
the air was just right to cause what was called St. Elmo`s fire---."

From my time in broadcast stations, I can testify these conditions
repeat.

In my experience, the radio towers took all the lightning strikes in the
area.

Charge buildup was a separate phenomenon.from lightning. This happened
in the wind ahead of an approaching thunderstorm. The insulated guy
segments would charge from the static in the air, announcing the
approaching storm with loud reports when conditions were right. Peering
out at the antennas disclosed flashes across the guy insulators
producing the reports. There were many towers with many insulators which
produced barrage fire. Noisy!

Best regards, Richard Harrison, KB5WZI

Hi Richard

Now 'that' I have seen a few times.
Probably not to the extent that you have experienced though.

When first out of skewl I took a job as a DJ, before a couple of
storms while working in the transmitter room at the tower site, I
could hear occasional pops, but never figured out where they were
coming from. Thanks for letting me know!

From my new residence I can see several radio and TV towers, I will
keep an eye on them just out of curiosity sake.

TTUL - 73+ de Gary - KGØZP