On Wednesday, September 25, 2019 at 7:22:24 PM UTC-7, Scott Williams wrote:
On Wednesday, September 25, 2019 at 7:21:40 PM UTC-5, 2G wrote:
On Wednesday, September 25, 2019 at 12:13:26 PM UTC-7, wrote:
As I understand it, lightning is seeking the path of least resistance to the ground. It went through the fiberglass trailer top and entered the ship at the top of the fin, question would be; where did it exit? The ship is sitting on rubber wheels (tail wheel and dolly wheels), so did it exit at the tail wheel into the aluminum floor, then to the rear legs, if they were down? Or, did it run the full length of the fuselage and exit through the saddle aluminum arms, then jump the rubber tires then into the floor out to the tongue and into the chains. To the tie-down point? Also, did it fry that good looking instrument panel on its way to ground? I believe other lightning strikes followed the metal push-rods, which offer less resistance than carbon fiber structure.
Food for thought, before placing your bid + that Cobra trailer is worth something close to 10K.
Cheers,
JJ

It looks like the current went down the pushrods and exited somewhere near the nose and thru the trailer floor. Carbon fiber is conductive, but high resistance to the point that commercial composite aircraft must include conductors to handle lightning current (https://www.compositesworld.com/arti...site-aircraft). I guess that the fuselage is okay with the possible exception of welded pushrod junctions. The instruments condition is unknown, but could be inspected. The most vulnerable instruments are the radio and transponder, and current could have jumped from them to other instruments.

Tom

I think once a factory representative takes a position of "Fuselage impossible to repair" and "potential unsafe structure cannot be brought back to service"
that's pretty much it. Not much to guess at really, is there?
Scott

I think the guy just looked at the photos, not the actual glider.

Tom