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On the big iron of United Airlines you could hear the building peak of
static through your ear piece.  When the aluminum skin was saturated with
static, there was a pronounced increase that was unmistakable.  It sounded
like an old time radio broadcast which could not be tuned-in.  The one thing
which helped drain this static, off the skin, was deploying of speed brakes
to about 10-25% of their travel. With that length of speed brake trailing
edge (30-40 feet) in the slip stream the static was usually dissipated to a
non threatening level.  The threat was a static discharge from some weird
place on the airframe to the clouds.  When a static discharge was
experienced, it sounded like a shot gun or cannon going off and the sky
would light up like a flashbulb had gone off.  The discharge would burn a
series of holes or a hole at the point of leaping off.  Sometimes it would
magnetize the nose gear strut and that would have to be checked at the next
landing.  These big iron birds have static wicks all over the trailing edges
of anything that had trailing edges and we still encountered a few
discharges.  In 32 years of flying the big iron I never heard of anymore
damage than what I mentioned above.  Of course, when Boeing builds these
birds, all moveable surfaces are bonded along with the major structural
components through out the airframe.

>From the what-it's-worth-department,

Jerry Grimmonpre LNC2
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Please send your photos and drawings to marvkaye@olsusa.com.
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