Hi Group,

I had the issue explained once to me over the air by some sort of expert 
and he says that even the height of things is not the main determining 
factor.  It all has to do with potential and path of least resistance.  
The one example this guy used to give is that he had a very tall 60 feet 
(I believe) tower--with a number of large antennas on various supports 
sticking up from it.  A real bad lightning strike hit his neighbor.  His 
neighbor's house was only about 30 feet from him.  for some reason of 
great potentiality complexity, the path avoided all the high objects on 
his own property, hit the phone cable going into the basement of his 
neighbor's house, arced across to the electrical system and basically 
fried all electrical circuits including three pronged outlets and mostly 
everything plugged into them; go figure!


On 6/25/2015 10:43 PM, Butch Bussen wrote:
> Actually, most cars in the u.s. until about 1952 were positive ground.
> Most stuff was six vfolt and my 47 ford is positive ground.  I was in my
> uncle's pickup once driving down the road and it did take a strike, or at
> least part of one.  It actually, near as we could tell, hit the am radio
> antenna.  Acgtually didn't seem to dammage anything except the fine wire
> inside the antenna cable was gone.  I replaced the antenna, and radio
> worked fine.
> Lightning is strange stuff.  Here in town, we had an old wood frame church
> with steeple about 100 feet from a water tower over 100 feet tall, steeple
> was mamaybe 30 feet tall.  Lightning hit the church.  Go figure.
> 73
> Butch
> WA0VJR
> Node 3148
> Wallace, ks.
>