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Hi Charles,
Thanks for your thoughts on the lightning strike subject. If the
following quote is true, I would feel a lot better. However, I've
attended all (known to me) lightning forums presented at Oshkosh in the
last 20 years and for the most part I came away scared to death to fly my
glass Lancair in a sky shared by thunderstorms. I would prefer to
believe your 'insulation' theory. I have 30+ years of
instrument/electrical experience with GE which may be the reason I'm
skeptical. The abundant thunderstorms in S Indiana keep me grounded in
the Lancair when I will fly the Cessna (but not in thunderstorm clouds). Until I'm convinced otherwise, I reluctantly advise future builders to
stick with metal airplanes if you plan to fly in the Summer in the
Midwest. I certainly hope others will jump in to help convince me my
heightened fears should be downgraded to at least YELLOW and below.
Earl E Schroeder Lancair N233EE Cessna N3595J
Evansville, Indiana 47712
4) And finally, the glass cloth model. Glass/epoxy is less conductive than air and therefore doesn’t carry any current at all therefore no power dissipation. The lighting bolt can strike through the glass to a conductive surface, such as carbon or aluminum at which point the equations above take over for the path. But typical numbers used to design electrical insulation have values like 1KV/milliinch of
thickness so with only a few mills of glass insulation, the air breaks down and the electricity follows the ionized path in air (read lightning bolt!) It just plain doesn’t want to go in the glass/epoxy at all.
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