Hi Daryl ..   
      
    DS>   And, with the shakiness of my hands, due to the nervous system damage   
    DS> from 2 indirect lightning strikes, I never could've drawn a diagram.   
      
    DS> Daryl, WX1DER   
      
   Considering your post I'm a LOT luckier than you about lightning strikes.   
      
   Although the detailed data isn't around me here, I've been involved in   
   TWENTY-NINE lightning strikes!  I got my original W(N)5WQN call in 1952 here   
   in College Station, Texas where Dad came to work at Texas A&M in 1936.    
   Although I didn't design them, one of my mentors, Dr. George Huebner, W5GDK,   
   did, I built the first color radar in the whole USA and also the first   
   lightning strike sferics research system while I was still in high school here   
   at A&M Consolidated high school.  I got to study how lighning was formed, was   
   really a radio wave issue and not electricity as such from research data at   
   the EE department of Texxas A&M.  My first real close lightning strike   
   personally was in my second auto at I think 16 years of age when I was going   
   up over the hill on Dexter Street next to A&M Consolidated School!  At the top   
   of the hill, lightning hit my car on the roof and hopped from the left front   
   wheel over the tire to the ground, blowing up my tire!  I was sorta shocked!    
   More interesting when I told the young girl that I was with at dancing school   
   at Texas A&M about it, she vanished from the dance school and never would   
   speak with me again!  They had a huge ranch out near Navasota, Texas and her   
   dad had been killed by a lightning strike that hit him directly when he was   
   riding his horse rounding up their cows.   
      
   In general here, my airplane has been hit six times directly, the Texas A&M   
   Research Vessel Hidalgo of which I was the marine radio telegraph operator   
   designing the original hurricane radio reporting stuff long before there was   
   even sattelite communications was hit eight times directly while I was on it   
   at sea.  Twice, while I was in Houston during those years when I was walking   
   on Main Street, lightning hit the power lines less than a block from me and a   
   number of people were whopped on the ground there.  Not me, luckily.  In those   
   years I also became the Chief Engineer for WTAW radio here and the 256 foot   
   tower was directly hit MANY times a year.  As well as the power lines that fed   
   the station directly that I managed to design absolutely correct lighting   
   ground special systems that stopped the damage to the station equipment there.   
      
   Our family bought our rural property out in Kurten, Texas where I did huge   
   design work for my experimental ham radio antenna operations where my only   
   real interest was really heavily involved with 40 meter CW work. To my   
   understanding, I am the only ham radio operator in the world who has ever   
   applied orignally for their first DXCC club award with three hundred initial   
   40 Meter CW country QSL's only!  My antenna farm out there is still hit an   
   average of at least twice a year directly by lighning strikes!  And from my   
   very decent design and protection work that I was able to effect in the first   
   years of the 1970's I have never lost even one device of any kind to a   
   lightning strike there.   
      
   Though the initial work was also an issue when a direct hit about two AM in   
   the morning blew me out of my bed in my bedroom on to the floor and left me   
   with the strangest taste in my mouth I have ever known...   
      
   Mike Luther N117C from Fido Net 117 and also still W5WQN and still a very   
   faithful 40 Meter CW fan   
      
      
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