Close call with lightning!

[KC10Chief]

Tonight I was out at one of the local tracks here in Oklahoma City (Action RC), and for some reason, there weren't too many people there racing. The weatherman had been warning all day of thunderstorms that might approach the area, plus there was a big OU and North Carolina game tonight. OU Smoked em by the way. Anyways, when I got to the track, the sky was clear with just a few small clouds. After the first heat, there were some dark clouds to the north of the track that seemed to be moving in our direction, but I didn't hear any thunder or anything. When I was getting ready to start the second heat, I noticed rain way off in the distance and maybe a little lightning, but it seemed far enough away that it wouldn't be a concern. I got done with the heat and my pit guy shut my truck off and as I was leaving the drivers stand, my cell phone rang and it was my dad calling me. He sometimes likes to come out and see the races. He asked where I was and I told him I was out racing and right then the whole area lit up with huge fingers of lightning coming down all around just a few hundred feet away at the most. I about dropped to my knees from the shock of the light and sound. The thunder was deafening and I said a curse word or two into the phone and told my dad that I was getting the he** out of there. People were running around like maniacs after that. I was wondering though if had I been up on the drivers stand for another minute if it would have been attracted by my radio antenna? I wouldn't want to find out. It could have turned out a lot worse. It's now four hours later and it's STILL storming outside. Lots of thunder and lightning tonight. Sounds like it's calming down though. I did a little research and found that if you are on the ground and can see lightning or hear thunder, then it is close enough to hit you. I think I'll be a little more cautious next time! Matt

[Mason Copeland]

I've never had something like that happen to me.That would have been SCARY!especially since i'm not use to storms cause I live southern California

[MaximumST'er]

KC10, you are very lucky! Lightning is attracted to metal objects, particularly ones that radiate electrical current or have internal energy sources (a transmitter pack is a dead ringer, as are electrical wires) :eek: Being around other antennas also makes it even more dangerous! I bet it was cool though! It would be neat to see an RC car get struck by lightning, I think. Thought it's a one in a million factor that you'll actually be hit, it still is scary to think that you were in the wrong place at the wrong time!
Nick

[R/C Homie]

maxster, lighting is attracted to humans more than metal and stuff hehehe. Once i was driving home with my dad, it was raining a bit and turning dark but it was still not storming. So anywho we are driving when i see thise HUGE bolt of lighting hit a power line in front of us, it sparked and stuff but nottin seriouse. It sure did scare me but it was all coo. Just thought i'd share dat witchyalls.

[bullfrog]

yea one time we drove up to florida in our RV to go to disney world we were at our camp site and next thing you know we heard a LOUND crackle sound and saw a BIG flash man the bolt was sooo strong it made our rv shake!!! well it turns out it hit a soda machine a few hundred feet away or so nuthin caught fire but they said if we could find a soda that wasnt damaged we could have it .... i had no such luck...lol

[Railman]

I was setting a kitchens' big counter top once during a horatious storm, & right when I was bent over to go under it a huge sound blast & flash of light hit. Because of my compromised position at the time it scared me half to death! :eek: One of the plumbers that was there swore that he could see another guy's skeleton while the guy was going up an open stairway! :eek: Of course we all thought he was jokeing untill we figured out just where the lightening bolt hit. While we where trying to figure out how to get the electric back on, we noticed that the neighborhood still had electricity. Upon futher investigation we found out that the breaker had blown, as in smoked, at the temp pole at the street. This was at a ground type transformer & not a tele pole. We traced the temp wire back to the house & found a box the had submerged in water during the storm. This was under the bricklayers metal scaffold that went beyobd the gabled home front. When we started to pull the wire out to see what the problem was we noticed some cardboard had been put over the top of the wire to help pretect it from the bricklayes falling brick etc. The cardboard was smoked black on the wires side!
I didn't really put it together at 1st, since it's fairly common to burn rubbish at the job sites. Then I looked up & saw the scaffold & put it all together. The lightening hit the scaffold, which was right in front of the livingroom picture window & maybe 15' from where the plumber saw this guys skeleton. It then it found several paths to ground. Some of it went to the dirt, & some of it went to throught the wires insulation & out throught the wires to the street temp pole & to the grounding rod etc out there. The thing about the smoked cardboard was IT WAS UNDER WATER WHEN THE
LIGHTENING HIT! Amazing!
I actually had a very close call another time when I was at home. A bad storm came in & I decided to unplug our dogs' "Invisable Fence" transformer in our garage. For you that aren't familiar with these they have a wire that's burried maybe 6" or so at the perimeter of the dogs' confinement area. Ours was rather long, & since we already had one control pannel blow from lightening I decided to unplug the transformer. Well it seemed like a good thing to do, but while I was reaching for the transformer... guess what happened? The thing exploded right off the wall & hit my van that was parked 6 feet away! That thing went straight horizontal! I was within 2' of grabbing it. :eek: I don't unplug it for storms anymore. :rolleyes: ;) Joe

[DirtRacinFool]

Two years ago in Vail CO, on a clear sunny day, a guy on a Mountain Bike was hit by Lightening. Turns out that the storm cloud where the Lightening came from was over 30 miles away. Until that time, Scientists had assumed that lightening would travel no more then 10 to 15 miles from a storm cell. Luckly the guy who got hit survived. (the things I learn from watching the Discovery Channel and TLC) LOL
I for one have a great fear of Lightening, being a Electrician for 11 years I seen the damage that Lightening can do first hand. I have had so many close calls from Lightening strikes its not even funny, one close strike on a job site I was at, put 3 guys in the hospital and killed two others.
Now when I see a storm coming, and i'm out racing, i'll shut everything down, and wait for the storm to pass. I've been bit by 120, 277 and 480 volts. I don't even want to experiance being hit by the power of Lightening, better to be safe then sorry. :eek:

[nitrovig]

i saw that same thing on the DIS channel.
a couple of weeks ago,we had T-storms in the area. lightning and all. my son,(he's 11) opted out of the Main because of the lightning in the area. his choice, my answer: you'll be able to race many more years. he made the call, and i'm proud of that. btw, they finished w/o any problems.

[bullfrog]

yes my dad told me about that he said to get on your knees and stick you but in the air that way the lightning will go from your butt to your legs then to the ground that way it wont go to your heart and kill you.

[Gabe]

Yes & No...
Electrons flow in all paths inversely to restance...It will still go through everything (yes your heart).
the main thing is to get DOWN.
It has been proven that a charge radaites up from the ground and the charge comes down to meet it. By getting down you can disturb the "stream" or "path" from you...
the hope is that it won't conect to you.
& if it does at least it doesn't have to go all the way through you.
No I'm not a scientist...but TLC & DISC is better than half the garbage on TV...
Unfourtinately the Man Upstairs has plans for all of us... just don't go looking for trouble ahead of time...

[Andrew the RC man]

man upstairs??...id say men upstairs and i think i got shafted in the guardian part....im startin to feel like the dood up their is taking a leak while im getting in trouble. :rolleyes:

[gubbs3]

Even if your antenna would have been hit, you would probably still be here. The worst of it would be having a handful of melted plastic.

[Railman]

DirtRacin, I gota know, How'd you get knocked by 460, & what did it feel like. I've heard that it's no fun to get zapped by 460, & that the odds aren't good to live through it. I run my shop on 230 3ph & it scares me enough as it is. So whats it feel like?
I' got a friend that used to work for a brother of mine as a framer. He was setting trusses that were dumped at the street under high voltage lines. The crane he was operating was the older kind where you stood on the ground to operate the levers. When he went to pick up a few trusses the boom got a little close to the high tension lines & the wires jumped over toward the boom, which I found out afterwards was a fairly common occurance. If I remember right the voltage was something like 20,000v, but I could be wrong on the number. He ended up standing there while the current welded the hammer at his hip to the outrigger. It also blew out the bottom of his feet, one elbow, & somehow ended going out the top of his skull. Another guy that was hooking up the trusses for him (the rookie on the crew) alertly threw down some 2 x 8 boards & made a running tackle at him to free him from the crane. It saved his life. The docs at the hospital coudn't figure out how he survived the jolt. After about 8 months of pain & skin grafts he was somewhat back to normal, other than a the 2" soft spot on the top of his head, & gobs of scar tissue. This guy has one of the best outlooks on life that I've ever seen, & has been an inspiration to me. He had 2 more children after that accident , started his own frameing business & has done very well for his family. It just goes to show what a strong character can do for you. By the way, & this is a true story, someone found the watch he was wearing at the time, noticed a pin had melted off, & believe it or not it was still running. Guess what brand it was? Yep a Timex! Tried to get him to contact them, but he said it wouldn't be a very good story! Joe

[KC10Chief]

Several years ago, I worked for a building in downtown Oklahoma City doing general maintenance and repairs. One of my duties was to go around to all the offices and replace light bulbs and fix anything else that might be wrong with the lights. The lights ran off of 220 volts. One day, I was working on a light and discovered that the ballast needed to be replaced. Now that I look back on it, I reaolize that my method was pretty stupid, but I didn't know any better at the time. I was doing this during business hours when people were at their desks, using computers, etc so I couldn't shut off power to the office which is what I would do if nobody was there. Since I couldn't cut the power, I would wear thick insulated gloves, and disconnect the live wires, and move them over and tape them to the ceiling with duct tape out of the way. Anyways, one day I was in a busy office doing this up on a metal ladder. I had the wires taped to the ceiling and was removing the ballast when the tape came loose and the wire came down and popped me right in the temple. I felt the jolt go from my head down into my arms and legs. I fell off of the ladder and landed on a pencil sharpener on a desk. I was really dazed and it took me a couple minutes to get my senses back. I had a really bad headache and my arms were somewhat numb. I felt fine after about 30 minutes, but still went and got checked out by a doctor just to be safe. It was shortly after that that I decided I'd had enough of crappy jobs and I joined the Air Force. That was almost 4 years ago now. Now I'm an aircraft mechanic and work with electricity often, but am VERY cautious after my first and hopefully last experience with being electrocuted! Matt

[draggerman11]

Ouch cheif! Good story railman, I wonder what 480 volts feels like. 7.2 is enough to light a snail on fire. I know that :p

[Gabe]

let me get this straight...
all this lightning and none of you won the PowerBall Lotery??? lol

I've seen too much cool stuff to even begin...
Just rember when the hair on your neck stands up ...LAY DOWN on the ground...
(you have a short time before it actually will strike)
It is Wild how the charge of the earth & clouds meet in a bolt of electrons...
Now if I take my SMH3000 and hook them up to a lightning rod...they would be super performanced enhanced :eek: into a puddle of goo! lol

[jeepinator]

WOW !
Great stories.
I grabbed onto 440 when I was in the NAVY. I was training some other dudes on these things called "limitorque" valves.
... well I was going to go through the whole story, but decided that it was dumb.
Anyway, 440 is pretty nasty. It just kinda knocked me for a loop. I jolted and threw myself back a few feet, landing on some diamond pattern metal grating. I had this weird tunnel vision and no hearing for a bit then everything normalized. I was sore for about a week ! Every muscle was aching like I had done the most insane workout.

[Mason Copeland]

We can learn another important lesson from this, don't pee on an electrical fence.

[bullfrog]

well one time in my old house we had a laundry room right by our garage so if u just walk in the garage door is right in front of u and the washer and dryer are to your right well one night i went down stairs to get a glass of water. i then nothiced a wave of water slowly coming toward me IT WAS COMING FROM THE LAUNDRY ROOM!!!!! well i rushed over there opend the door and turned on the light ZAP!!! when i went to turn it on i touched one of the screws that held the faceplate on and it shocked me!!!! i was like WOW that was cool!!! so i did it about 3 more times ( it did not hurt at all it just felt like little bugs were crawling in my viens) then i went o get my dad it turns out that the water hoses clamp came off and the water was EVERY WHERE mainly in the garage. but i have one question. what the heck caused me to get shocked by the screw holding on the faceplate???????? :confused: all i know id it felt cool :D o and ive also been shocked by a 7.2 volt batt. that kinda shocked the pee roony out of me.

[ 08-27-2001: Message edited by: bullfrog ]

[SteveP]

This really belongs in the off-topic section more than it doesn here, but for some reason I can't move it. I'll just close it so the information is here, but it's best to start a thread like this in the off-topic section next time.