[FADCA] Watch the Blue Light

[Chuck Hast]

On 6/17/05, bud thompson <budt at cfl.rr.com> wrote:
> Picture this. . . I'm sitting at my computer answering an e-mail.  Immediately to my left, just inches more than an arm's length away, is a window looking across the back yard to the lake.  At the floor level beneath the window is the single point ground plate with five Polyphasor lightning arrestors feeding through to the buried coax feed lines going out to the 70 ft tower. 60 ft from the house.
> 
> It was raining, but not hard.  I'd not paid attention to any thunder and had not noticed any lightning until . . .
> 
> A spot of blue light out the corner of my eye - and BANG! immediately.  I was not sure if the light, which appeared to be just about eye height was inside the room between the wall and me, outside, or just a reflection of lightning in the glass - but I thought was in the room with me!

Was the blue light BEFORE the actual discharge or was it the
discharge, if it was
dark enough you may have seen the leader that forms before the actual
high current
discharge takes place, if you are near or on one end of it this is
sort of like the last
view a fly has of a dragon fly bearing down on it... You see it and
then you are caught
up in it...
> 
> No doubt the Polyphasor lightning arrestors did their job - as this was a direct or near-direct hit!
> 


Sounds like it. Did you go and check your coax for perforations in the
underground
part? Is the coax in some sort of pipe or is it just buried? the
discharge may have
popped holes in the insulation...

> Then there's that brown spot .  .  .
 
If you ain't left a few of those you do not need the tee-shirt yet... How about
being on a tower when lightning hits not too far away, now that is a real hair
raiser... No brown spot, brown drip....

-- 
Chuck Hast 
To paraphrase my flight instructor;
"the only dumb question is the one you DID NOT ask resulting in my going
out and having to identify your bits and pieces in the midst of torn
and twisted metal."