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Lightning Sriikes.......
Larry,
Over the course of 30 years of flying Heavy Iron I had (3) strikes of one sort or another and I remember them all. (1) was lightning for sure. It had the classic zig zag look, we were decending into Boston, when I saw it I crossed my arms in front of my eyes and when I peaked it zapped the airplane a B727. I remember What our concerns were, that it didn't do damage to the eletrical systems. which it didn't. We were told we had flame arresters in the fuel tanks. On the walk around some of the discharge wicks were missing some were loose and it looked like someone struck across the fuselage with an arc welder. I still have one of the wicks some place. One was on approach into Cleveland, it was snowing, we had a lot of gas in the event we had to divert. On short final a new F/E asked if he should shut off the wing anti-ice, I said ok. Just then the aircraft got zapped just when I should have been pulling off some power that the wing bleed air was using, it went right to additional thrust when I did not want it. Got her back on speed and landed. On the remainder of that rotation I think it was either a (3) or (4) day trip one of my eyes ached. when I went to the eye doc he said I had a slight burn in the retna. The last was some sort of strike/discharge leaving Detroit, again light snow/drizzle conditions. The last (2) there were no returns as I recall on the radar. Keep a good distance from them. Some one will have a good handle on the subject I would guess, RE: pos. charge, neg. charge, cloud to cloud, cloud to ground types of lightning....Guy....old72driver....
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