Re: MT nightmare

Appreciate what Franklin demonstrated in 1752. Lightning
rods are not protection. They are simply a connection to
protection - earth ground. Lightning seeks earth ground.
Obtain earth destructively through a church steeple, or
destructively through household appliances. Franklin simply
gave lightning a shorter electrical path to earth ground.

We tend to think of protection in terms of what we can see.
But earthing - what we don't see - is really the protection.

Effective protectors don't stop, block, or absorb lightning.
They connect lightning to what lightning wants. Earth
ground. Both lightning rod and 'whole house' protector are
only as effective as earth ground.

Plug-in protectors don't make the short and essential
connection to earth ground. Plug-in protectors quietly forget
to mention they don't protect from the typically destructive
transients. Why? Again, protection is all about earth
ground. The quality of and short connection to earth ground
defines protection - be it lightning rods or appliance
protection. So plug-in protectors forget to mention things
such as earthing and their potential to create house fires.

djgordon wrote:
> In July of 1977, days before my fifth birthday, we were camping on
> the lake when our neigbors came to where we were at about 10 at
> night and told us that lightning had struck our TV antenna and burnt
> our house down. I remember all that was left standing was half of
> the bricks from the walls here and there and the toilet. So please
> be mindful. A lot of people in our area have lightning rods on
> their roofs because of a seemingly high incidence of lightning
> struck houses.
>
> Dani
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Lightning Damage
    ... Lightning is not DC where you worry about the resistance but a complex waveform that requires a low inductance and is treated as a R.F. problem. ... Some of the early work on lightning protection came from measuring the rise time on strikes to the Empire State Building with low bandwidth cathode ray tube oscilloscopes. ... In a metal building lightning rods may not offer additional protection as the building itself is the lowest impedance structure. ...
    (sci.astro.amateur)
  • Re: Weather Station and Lighting
    ... But to lightning, concrete is conductive. ... Path that includes an electrical connection ... a path from incoming lightning to earth ground ... protection earths transients before they can enter a building. ...
    (uk.sci.weather)
  • Re: Weather Station and Lighting
    ... First, even demonstrated in professional papers, blunt rods ... direct lightning strikes are typically so trivial that even ... superior protection. ... Such Early Streamer Emission (ESE) devices were so ...
    (uk.sci.weather)
  • Re: Lightning immunity for a computer connected to a weather station?
    ... computer must first connect down to earth ground. ... so that lightning strikes are made irrelevant. ... a 4 wire cable - not a 3 wire). ... Lightning will overwhelm that protection - again - ...
    (sci.electronics.design)
  • Re: Lightning Damage
    ... Lightning rods containing radioactive materials are called Early ... connection significantly shorter than paths via electronics. ... Dan discusses a 70 degree cone of protection. ...
    (sci.astro.amateur)
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