|
Relative to your
May column “Zap! Boom!” do you have any suggestions for protecting
those of us with steel hulls from lightning, or will our boats simply
serve to protect the nearby FRP and wood boats by involuntarily attracting
the lightning strike to our own boats? R.D., via e-mail
Your
steel hull in itself will not make you a more likely target for lightning
to any significant or proven degree. In fact, your hull makes it easier
to install a true lightning protection system.
The crucial concept
is that you cannot really shield any boat from a strike, but you can attempt
to limit the damage it might inflict. The first defense is one or more
“air terminals,” or lightning rods, as high above the boat
as possible, connected via low-resistance conductor to some sort of ground
plate on the hull bottom. That’s where you’re ahead of the
game, as your entire hull bottom can act as a ground plate. The second
defense is bonding your electronics into the protection system, and the
third is to have a game plan for securing the boat and retiring to a neutral
spot below if and when you find yourself in lightning. Overall, while
strikes do act in notoriously erratic ways, they don’t hit boats
all that often. Also, as I note in this month’s column, products
are appearing that will let us track storm cells at a distance and thus
possibly avoid them.
Finally, the fact that
your bottom is an enormous ground plate does mean that an improperly designed
lightning protection system could cause serious electrolysis problems.
NMEA and ABYC are knowledgeable on these issues, and you shouldn’t
have a system designed without the expertise of both organizations.—B.E.
Got a marine electronics
question? Write to Electronics Q&A, Power & Motoryach,
260 Madison Ave., 8th Fl., New York, NY 10016. Fax: (917) 256-2282.
e-mail: PMYElectronics@primediamags.com.
No phone calls please.
Next page >
Imtra IMW Wiper Control > Page 1,
2, 3, 4, 5,
6, 7, 8
|