Lightning Protection, CTS vs Faraday Cage

Many years ago experts told me that the dissipation arrays tended to have many mixed to negative opinions with most of the positive opinions coming from people that profited from them. I don't know if this is still true.

Many years ago there were some level headed people that stated that even if the dissipative array didn't prevent the strike a well grounded array should attract the lightning to it and provide a margin of safety around the array. I don't know if this is a widely accepted view today.

Before the event we call a lightning strike there are typically numerous segments of leaders that jump a short distance and then wait a fraction of a second to jump another short distance. No matter how good you think a dissipative array is you should also ask yourself if any combination of leaders and corona could be blown under the array on a windy day. The lightning strike comes down (or up) the segmented leader path. If that path was blown as it was being formed then the lightning might sometimes go places where you think it shouldn't.

When lightning flickers there are actually multiple strikes. I recall 4-7 being common numbers of strikes but my memory may be faded. When the lightning strikes a tall object (tree, pole) I think it is common for all the multiple strikes to hit the same object. I have seen video of lightning triggered by small test rockets. The multiple strikes came down the same channel in the air, but the wind blew the channel to the side causing each of the multiple strikes to "walk" across the field. Could lightning walk under the array under the right wrong wind conditions? I don't know. I do know that I would not want to bet a life on the assumption that it could not.

My suggestions:

1) BE VERY CAREFUL IF SAFETY OF HUMANS IS AN ISSUE.

2) Don't trust me. You don't even know who I am.

My only comment is, if it ain''t broke, don't fix it.

Here are some useful info regarding lightning protection

Lightning Protection