[BC] Lightning and grounding ... fun for all!

[WFIFeng@aol.com]

In a message dated 05/18/2005 08:12:47 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
radiotech at bellsouth.net writes:

> But again, there is no easy way to prove that the dissipaters do work.
>  Although their seems to be strong evidence that they do. Even though you 
>  don't want to accept testimonial evidence of their performance, how 
>  could you prove that they did or didn't prevent a lightning strike?

IMHO, the testimonials are good enough for me... when stations in high 
occurence areas for T-storms are accustomed to multiple strikes per year... then add 
the "porcupine" dissipators, and suddenly see none (or a dramatic reduction 
in the number of) strike, I'd say that that's pretty strong evidence that 
*something* has changed.

I would tend to think of the things as an insurance policy... while they may 
not dissipate *every* strike, they certainly appear to be effective at 
dissipating *most*. If a station sustains 10 strikes a year, and not only sees 1 or 
2, I'd say that that's pretty good!

When I did the experiment shown in that video, myself, I observed exactly the 
same effect. A blunt object brought near the sphere drew frequent and fairly 
strong arcs from about an inch. (It was a fairly small generator.) A pointed 
object could be brought to almost *touching* the sphere before any tiny, weak 
arcs could be seen. It was just a hissing, blue haze off the tip until then.

If this scales-up to natural lightning, then in essence, only the strongest 
charges will be able to build up enough energy (in spite of the dissipator) to 
strike... but when they do, they will be far less severe than if the 
dissipator was not there. IMHO, anyway. :)

Willie...