Nice! I am a retired TV/Radio Transmitter Engineer. I can tell you that being inside a transmitter shack at the tower base during an electrical storm is insane! Keep the videos coming!
Do you have to stay away from the equipment inside the transmitter shack when there's lightning? I can imagine the voltage must rise pretty high on the antenna feedlines, despite most of it bleeding off into the ground system?
Amazing video Dan. I was the Chief Engineer at WVAH when this happened and when the old tower collapsed. As soon as I saw the first frame I knew what tower it was without seeing the description. The shower of sparks is partially the sharp pointed stainless spikes flying off of the arrestor. That top antenna was the old Chanel 8 analog antenna and below that is the olf WVAH analog antenna. The digital antenna for WVAH and WCHS is on the bottom and just the top of it is visible.
Really awesome video!! Amazing to see the perfect capture of so many discharges to that tower. With all the hot metal shards flying, that square guard must be wearing thin!!!
man...this is stuff you just can't see with the naked eye...even at 100% speed???first of all! you're seldom staring at the exact spot a lightning bolt strikes! secondly your dim light vision gets ruined to the point where you could never make out the channel bead, etc with this much clarity...brilliant video
The discharge is hitting the lightning arrester and not the active elements of the antenna, that's how it stays transmitting. The arrester or lightning conductor is often a sharp metal conductor pointing skyward at the highest point, and leads a conduction path straight to ground. "Point action" at the tip of the conductor will cause a stream of positive ions to the negative cloud which may discharge the cloud sufficiently to avoid a strike, but in the event of a strike the lightning is attracted to the positive point strikes it and it is conducted safely to ground. Avoiding all the active parts of the antenna array and doing its job perfectly.
Well, that's the "theory" anyway, whether nature actually obeys that line of human thinking is another thing entirely ... HV electric discharges forming conductive gas plasmas that can move and migrate to create new conductive channels do NOT behave in strict deterministic ways that you or I understand in a first pass analysis ...
In fact, that is not supposed to be a lightning "arrester" but a "dissipator" so it did not do the job it was supposed to do. The goal here is to dissipate the charges/ions on the tower completely and make the tower free of lightning. The only protected equipment here is the aviation obstruction bulb nothing else. Each strikes carries lightning current to ground through tower body and all equipment on tower are most probably completely destroyed. It would be impossible to take any of these pictures if the product at the top worked perfectly. Sorry.
At 0:36 , the three sounds before the real sound of thunder we hear is the sound of the SPD against power surges, because the overvoltage propagates in the circuits at almost the same speed as that of light. Otherwise it can also be the electric induction in electrical circuits due to electromagnetic peak generated by the arc (the magnetic field is as fast as light). By thunder against mécannique is a wave, a shock wave due to instantaneous expansion after its heating at the same temperature as that prevailing at the surface of the sun, hence the powerful "explosion".
Amazing captures, thanks. It's enjoyable with some astonishing feelings to see each bolt hits. I wonder how often should they repair the top of the tower.
Excellent video, how we're you sheltering yourself? Did anyone else notice the two strikes on the lower structure of the tower (TV signal radiator?)? Lightning doesn't always hit the highest point of anything. You high rise dwellers, think about that next time you decide to watch a storm from your exposed balcony!
Whats interesting to me is that this tower is broadcasting the entire time this is going on. Even the strike a 7:22 that directly hits the array would not have shut it down.
Just worth noting the sparks coming the tower are not metal shards. If it was, there wouldn't be much left of the tower after a few storm seasons :P Most cases of sparks are actually ionized or super heated carbon and other impurities which can come from the atmosphere itself. Still, looks really pretty :P
Excellent video, Awesome!! Wish I could have been there with you. I love a good thunderstorm. Where were you standing while watching and video recording this event?
if you shined a laser light up into a storm, could the laser draw the lightning to you? would it follow the laser? a lasor an go a mile with those little laser lights
Very good work! great video! what is the name of the background music. I searched for music bakery but i didn't find any ambient-electronic related to this one !! :/
I've managed to be hit by lightning twice in my life. Once I was hit while in my bed and once while I was standing in a gas station. I hope not to have it happen again.
Could you not install a bank of capacitors and inductors to store this energy? Although it's probably the last thing the electric companies want us doing, it just seems like a plentiful and renewable energy source.
Not very plentiful, and not easy to "capture"... It's not as simple as adding a few Capacitors to a pole. Besides, a single lightning strike is only equivalent to about 150 litres of gasoline energy wise... which is easily extracted from the ground for pennies/litre, and can be stored for years... Even if someone could manage to design one that functioned properly, I doubt if anyone in the electric industry would even notice if everyone had lightning collectors installed...
I'm curious, is the bead out the fading of the electrical current, or is it the fading of the superheated electric gas that the current has interacted with?
4:25 If the cage around the beacon at the top of the tower loses a bit of metal like that each time it gets hit, I wonder if eventually it will burn through and fail?
7:37 st elmos fire it occurs around ships and theres a myth if it rings around your head you would die but st elmos fire is rare and now I hate elmo XD
