Aircraft Ground Ops, How fast is a millisecond???

[tjbusa]

Be careful out there when thunderstorms are in the area, luckily no one was by the right side of the nose gear when lightning hit the tail.

[Apex Motorsports]

Oh crap!

[s1k0]

Scary ass shit!

[gramps_green_rs]

[ron10]

that is so weird.

[tjbusa]

Hey Mods, I intended to put this in, "Off-topic Discussions"
Move it if you want.

[Taintedveins]

Being that close really isn't funny from personal experience... Had one hit the area behind our house when my father and I were working on our yard, literally all we saw was a giant flash of light all round us and a deafening boom.

[Steve Dallas]

Scary as hell, damn right.

Closest I ever was to a lightning strike was about 50 yards away. I was carrying a metal canoe up in Canada, just north of the border to Minnesota. We were doing a portage, and a tree got hit up the trail from where we were. I put down the canoe pretty quickly, that's for damn sure.

[Dznts]

wow that was crazy

[LimaCharlie]

What is the thing/part that went flying from the front landing gear?

[Zabo]

Originally Posted by LimaCharlie

What is the thing/part that went flying from the front landing gear?

Looks like a chunk tarmac or a metal tiedown taken out from the force of the lighting trying to find an exit. Something on the tarmac must have attracted it to fire out the side rather than the nose cone like it's supposed to.

It's also why you see all (or most) airliners with that ridged nose cone, it protects the radar and also helps channel the lightning across the skin. This strike looks like it went through the airframe and out the skin.. odd.

In any case, the aircraft will be grounded and have all electronics pulled and inspected, probably a full D check where it's torn down to the frame to make sure it didn't do anything more than travel where it was supposed to along the airframe.

Closest I've been was around 20-25 feet from a strike in all three cases. Tree in the front yard got struck twice before it finally died, and one in the back of our neighbor's yard got cored out by a strike. Latter killed everything in his next door neighbors house and in our house killed the garage door. When we pulled the board it was black.

Got a new door out of insurance for free, which was nice because we needed one. Also thankfully, all my stuff was plugged into multiple surge protectors, so all I got was a momentary blip in power and cable feed before I knew what was going on..

[austinjames]

close call

[tjbusa]

Originally Posted by LimaCharlie

What is the thing/part that went flying from the front landing gear?

I believe it's the hub cap that protects the axle bearings, if you notice, there are two drains on either side of the nose gear. The drains are protected with heavy metal grids and obviously the one on the right was closer to jump because electricity chooses the path of least resistance.
You can see the right drain smoking near the end.

[f5journal]

There used to be a large tree in the middle of this picture. Lightning hit the tree, came down, jumped off onto the radio antennae of my brothers Grand Am which was sitting directly to the left of where this Accord is. It went forward thru the car and took out all electrical wiring.

It then jumped out of the left front wheel and into the right front wheel of a Prelude I had parked next to it (exactly where the Accord is). It went thru the crossmember and jumped out the left front wheel and into the ground.

It headed left around that red maple tree following the phone line and into the house.

I was standing about 15 feet left of the left edge of this picture up where that other Accord is.

All three wheels I mentioned had a 3/4 diameter hole burned in them, and it blew out a trench in the ground as it followed the phone line.

His car was totalled and we had to call the fire department.

Lightning is bad, bad stuff.