[TowerTalk] Lightning

[Jim Lux]

At 07:45 PM 1/3/2007, Roger Kissel wrote:
>Hi Again
>
>With talk about lightning protection, I recall seeing a site showing 
>a static dissipator that looked like a fuzzy ball, placed atop the 
>tower. It supposedly dissipates the corona charge on the tower so 
>the lightning doesn't strike the tower.  I kinda shrugged and passed 
>on from it.  I found it while I was surfing for Rohn 45.
>
>It consisted of a brush made out of about 200 (says them) stainless 
>steel wires, crimped into a holder, each bent so that the resultant 
>product looked kinda like a 'feather-duster'.
>
>Does anybody know what this product is called ?

A waste of money?

Lots of research on "static dissipators", "Lightning Eliminators", 
"porcupines", etc. in respected peer reviewed journals, and the 
upshot is they don't work and there's no physics that says it should 
work in the first place.
http://home.earthlink.net/~w6rmk/lightning.htm has links to the papers, etc.

However, lots of hype from mfrs and anecdotes that claim they 
work.  (I particularly like the one where they claim "As sold to 
NASA".. true enough, NASA bought one to test it, and it failed 
miserably.  There's a cool picture of a lightning strike hitting 
right in the middle of the dissipator.)

Jim, W6RMK