Drones vs lightning

[AerialEye]

 

[sebastian.bilbao]

hay que tener mucha plata...

 

[alokbhargava]

Interesting experiment

Question: Will the strike behavior remain the same if the drone is untethered?

 

[Richard R]

used to work in the Air Force Atmospheric Electricity Hazards Facility where we were studying the effects of lightning on aircraft and how to protect them. Actually flew instrumented aircraft into thunderstorms to get them struck!! Contrary to popular believe, aircraft don't initiate strikes. Instead, n aircraft may intercept the path of a strike, usually one of the lobes of the charged return path. They just don't have enough capacity (talking about capacitor type capacity) to significantly affect the strike. We had several lightning simulators that could produce multiple million volt pulses! As long as the tether was non-conductive, what you see in the image is a very good representation of what would happen in the open. Of course, if the tether is conductive, the lower portion of the arc would just travel down it.