Lightning strike

I had a lightning strike my PD10 observatory five weeks ago. All the equipment was lost and is in the process of being replaced. HOWEVER..I have heard from quite a few people about fiberglass domes being subject to wind induced electircal charge build up which then make a strike very attractive. Jerry at Technical Innovations says never heard of anything like that before. However, just last week another Tak owner suffered the same type of strike and lost a bunch of Tak equipment. I'm scared to death to put new stuff back in. Anybody want to weight in on this one.

Norm Lewis

How about a simple lightning rod?

There was a discussion of this on another group just recently.
Here's what Ron Wodaski had to say:
<<I recently participated in the design of a lightning protection system
for a large observatory. Some things I learned:

* Even if you spend a lot of money (say $50,000), you still can't buy
complete protection from lightning strikes. If lightning hits, and
you've done all the right things, and spent the money to do those right
things, you still only have a 50-50 chance of having your equipment and
building survive the hit. Lightning is just too powerful and too
unpredictable.

* It's hard to image a really effective lightning protection system that
would cost less than $10,000. Startling idea, that. But you need massive
amounts of copper, lots of air terminals, big trenches, a ground ring,
and some way to dissipate static charges effectively to have a shot at
substantial protection. Heck, you could spend $10k just digging trenches
and burying the copper.

* The less you spend, the less protection you have.

* There is a lot of anecdotal stuff out there on lightning protection.
Even the experts disagree on the right way to provide protection.

Ron Wodaski >>>>END QUOTE

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dan kowall