ASW 27 destroyed by lightning in trailer

Needing a particular part, I have asked AIG who got the high bid on salvage in the past. They told me who received the high bid, but would not disclose what the high bid was.
JJ

Well, with such free advertising on RAS I bet the winning bid was relatively high

Ramy

On Wednesday, November 20, 2019 at 8:38:03 PM UTC-8, Ramy wrote:
Well, with such free advertising on RAS I bet the winning bid was relatively high

Ramy

How many volts and watts are in lightning?
Lightning can have 100 million to 1 billion volts, and contains billions of watts.
I looked up some lightning info and found this site.
https://www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/...lightning/faq/

On Wednesday, November 20, 2019 at 11:38:03 PM UTC-5, Ramy wrote:
Well, with such free advertising on RAS I bet the winning bid was relatively high

Ramy

The people who are likely to be able to undertake projects like this watch the AIG site. I doubt RAS affected the bidding.
From the buyer of about two dozen "totaled" gliders.
UH

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

Dear Rex,
This are quite impressive pictures. From my point of view, at least the fuselage is impossible to repair.
The lightning must have left the glider somewhere and everything in between might have damages. The
control system and also the carbon layers in the fuselage shell are conductive, so without destructive
investigations it seems not possible to determine what is damaged and what not. The best would be to
cut the fuselage in pieces. So the lightning damage could be investigated more in detail and this would
secure that this potential unsafe structure cannot brought back to service again.
The wings might be okay, if no traces of smoke or burnt areas were found. But finally this have to be
decided by the local inspector.

So what's welded on the trailer:

Wheel bearings or chains?

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

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

On Wednesday, September 25, 2019 at 8:21:40 PM UTC-4, 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 could not get any sense of where the exit point was.
How did you? or is this an educated guess?
I agree path likely got to push rods.
UH