Lorn,

You obviously live in a cave without Internet. There have been NUMEROUS photos on this forum alone showing disastrous damage of "plastic" aircraft being hit by lighting.

I don't have the pictures handy, but the two I remember best is a sailplane in Europe hit while flying and another Lancair that was parked. The vertical stabilizer was melted and was touching the ground.

There have been many other well documented cases as I am sure others will attest too.

Warm regards,

Gary

FXE (Fort Lauderdale Executive)
http://www.uslan.com/hinge-kit.html

Earl,

I am not at all qualified to talk about lightning but I am very experienced. I have been flying for over 32 years east of the Mississippi. I have flown my O-320 for over 1,000 hours since I purchased it in 1998. I have no static wicks and no weather equipment. I ask the controllers to help me with the weather. I have flown (at night) so close to thunderstorms that the turbulence was so bad that I couldn't push the push to talk (PTT) button to communicate. A couple of months ago, in snow, I had my hair stand up from the static.

Thats my experience. I don't have a concern about our glass planes in bad weather. I have heard of lightning punching holes in metal airplanes. I have never heard of this problem in our glass planes except on this list and then it is only a concern not backed by data.

Show me someone qualified to talk about glass plane damage and not the power of a lightning bolt and I will be the first to listen. (Excuse me. I meant pay attention. I am always listening.)

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The 'lighting' subject pops up (pun intended) from time to time and I
marvel at how lightly it is treated.  Over the years, I have attended
nearly all the lightning forums at Oshkosh which were given by very
qualified (in my opinion) presenters.
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Earl Schroeder