Hi Jack

That is probably true and the reason the project was abandoned!

Step Leaders can form and reach up from almost any grounded source,
but more often than not, the eventual discharge causes no appreciable
harm.

The small study I helped with was some 25 or 30 years ago and I really
don't remember too much of the details about it, other than apparent
physical damage was almost always within our red zones.

I don't think the spheres we were using were anywhere near 300 feet in
diameter, if I recall they were like 36 feet, 72 feet and 108 feet.
Regardless of the size of the ball, on most structures the red zone
was in the same place. Only on very tall structures would the red
zones be more than one zone at varying heights along the structure.

I do remember our accuracy for the town we modeled was very high over
90%, but then too, we had a LOT of red zones as well since we were
using like 5 different sizes of balls to mark these zones.

You also have to remember, back when I was in Skewl, the correct
answer to a question was considered WRONG. And the wrong answer
correct. EG: Number of Elements, the WRONG answer the skewl demanded
as correct was 45 Elements NO MORE NO LESS, and you had better not
forget the NO MORE NO LESS phrase!
There are 92 Natural Elements and about 114 Elements Maybe More.
But if you put that on your exam, you were graded as the answer being
WRONG.

MOST of the stuff I learned in skewl was Erroneous in Real Life, I
don't doubt that our lightning experiments were also!

TTUL
Gary