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just brew it!
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Re: Lightning Damage Anyone?

Tue Aug 07, 2012 5:41 pm

UberGerbil wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
The bit about the compressed aluminum tube reminded me of this site.

Wow, that's really cool. Now I want to make some of those and do a little casual "magic" with coins I borrow from others.

Yeah, all you need is a capacitor bank capable of delivering a 12 kilovolt, 200 kiloampere pulse for 25 microseconds. And a few other odds and ends, like a bombproof chamber to contain the shrapnel from the exploding copper coil. No sweat! :D

(That's 2.4 gigawatts of power... but delivered over such a short period of time that the total energy consumed is only a few watt-hours.)
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
UberGerbil
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Re: Lightning Damage Anyone?

Tue Aug 07, 2012 8:35 pm

ChronoReverse wrote:
They do have the toonie on that page:

A Canadian "Toonie" has the center loosened at 6,500 joules, but the center is still held captive. At 14,000 joules, Rob Stephens, a friend and fellow coin shrinker from Ontario, Canada was able to separate the coin into two independent pieces. However, his blast shield failed during the shot, and he sustained considerable damage to his lab from shrapnel from the exploding work coil
Ah, somehow I missed that, and the results are even more amusing than I expected. (Not only does the Canadian mint resist your puny 14,000 joules, it punishes you for trying).
just brew it! wrote:
Yeah, all you need is...
In some cases, a valid definition of "make" is "pay someone else for the results" ;)
 
JohnC
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Re: Lightning Damage Anyone?

Tue Aug 07, 2012 9:51 pm

Few pics I've found of lightning damage. The lightning probably hit either the TV antenna or the satellite antenna on same roof, or very near to them. The cables from both the regular TV antenna and satellite antenna were disconnected from satellite receiver, but were still laying very close to it (at least according to the owner's own words).

The cables from both antennas (with melted connectors):
Image

The satellite receiver - the side which was near the (disconnected) antenna cables:
Image

The PCB inside the TV (the TV was connected to satellite receiver):
Image

Inside the cheap surge protector (to which the TV and satellite receiver were connected):
Image

As far as I know, there was no other electrical damage to other appliances.
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bobboobles
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Re: Lightning Damage Anyone?

Tue Aug 07, 2012 10:50 pm

Hah wow! Clearly demonstrates the uselessness of those surge protectors against any power spike with some oomph behind it.
 
JohnC
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Re: Lightning Damage Anyone?

Tue Aug 07, 2012 10:57 pm

bobboobles wrote:
Hah wow! Clearly demonstrates the uselessness of those surge protectors against any power spike with some oomph behind it.

Nah, the only thing this demonstrates is that if you have antenna cables coming inside your house - they also need a proper power protection :wink: The antenna cables were NOT plugged into surge protector or had any other type of protection.
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just brew it!
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Re: Lightning Damage Anyone?

Tue Aug 07, 2012 11:42 pm

That looks severe enough that a consumer-grade surge protector on the antenna cable may not have helped.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
JohnC
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Re: Lightning Damage Anyone?

Wed Aug 08, 2012 12:21 am

just brew it! wrote:
That looks severe enough that a consumer-grade surge protector on the antenna cable may not have helped.

You're probably right, but we can't know that for sure unless we can actually test that :wink:
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just brew it!
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Re: Lightning Damage Anyone?

Wed Aug 08, 2012 12:39 am

JohnC wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
That looks severe enough that a consumer-grade surge protector on the antenna cable may not have helped.

You're probably right, but we can't know that for sure unless we can actually test that :wink:

That's why I said "may". :wink:
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
bobboobles
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Re: Lightning Damage Anyone?

Thu Aug 09, 2012 11:03 pm

Resident lightning magnet back with another field report. I drive around a lot for work and got caught in a thunderstorm from hell this afternoon. I was in it for like 10 miles doing 15-20mph and the constant lightning and 100 yard visibility sure made it exciting.

I was coming up to a convenience store on the side of the road and BAM lightning struck a power pole right out in front of the place. A nice puff of smoke and some good sparks flew off the top and the two transformers or something between them sparked a few times. They didn't blow up, thank goodness, because when I got closer I noticed there was a lady waiting to pull out of the lot about 10 feet from the pole. I did stop to make sure she was OK (she was), but I imagine she got a pretty good scare out of it!
 
Sigma0004
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Re: Lightning Damage Anyone?

Fri Aug 10, 2012 2:24 am

I had an interesting experience with lightning 4 years ago.
Bolt split a tree, arced into my phone line, blew a trench 20ft down the line, traveled another 20 to the house,
and still had enough juice when it hit the dsl modem to not only fry every piece of equipment connected to it--
it blew the network and phone jacks out of the walls.

Had to replace both the phone wiring and network cable runs-- I'm amazed it didn't cause a fire.

Home Insurance covered the damage, but recovering the data wasn't the easiest thing in the world.
Carbonite, Mozy etc. aren't feasible when you live out in the boonies and
have a tidily 768Kbps DSL connection from Ma Hell (or as I like to call 'em Bricksouth)

After spending days searching I found equipment from Blackbox that would help (without messing with the signal)
DSL+Phone with grounding wire

RJ-45 with grounding wire
They do have one self-contained-but it's far more expensive
Isolator

Cable (not sure about these for true broadband use)
sacrificial termination
ground block unit

For protecting the rest of the house I'd recommend a whole house surge protector be installed (from Sycom, Leviton, Siemens or APC)
I'm not offering any link here due to the fact it would take all night due to myriad types.
(In Circuit Breaker Panel, mounted next to CB panel, Metering socket replacement, wall socket, etc.)

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