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Jerry,

You don't even need the nearly empty fuel tanks - fiberglass and lightning are a deadly mix.  Unless you have the carbon fiber airframe, you probably want to stay away from any sort of lightning.  A few years ago, the Discovery channel (or something like that) showed the test of the mesh imbedded into the airframe that Glasair had as an option on the Glasair III.  To make a long story short, the structure without the mesh suffered considerable damage when struck by the static discharge, to the point that it probably would have failed in flight.  In  April 1999, a glass glider in the UK got hit by a bolt of lightning and was pretty much blown apart.  You can read about the results on Avweb at http://www.avweb.com/newswire/news9951a.html.  There's a link to the accident investigation report.  I plan to fly IFR also, but from what I've read and seen, it won't be near lightning.

By the way, thanks for the research on the Crest foam stuff.

Gary

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