[TowerTalk] Ham Radio Tower & Lightening

[Bill Turner]

ORIGINAL MESSAGE:

On Wed, 2 Aug 2006 04:26:00 -0700 (PDT), you wrote:


>Sailboat masts attract lightning for various reasons, among them is that the mast is not properly bonded to the earth and so builds a static charge that makes it a target...  A bit of web searching will find you thousands of reports of boat strikes... 

------------ REPLY SEPARATOR ------------

I'm sure sailboat masts do take lots of strikes, but I question the
reason you give. Here's why:

The earth itself is the source of the static charge, right? If you had
two sailboat masts side by side, one grounded and one not, which one
would build up the greatest static charge? The grounded one,
obviously.

Lightning, like all electricity, always takes the path of least
resistance.

Bill, W6WRT