...In the Search engine page, I linked, ...
... the rod develops an umbrella coverage, ...
Its hardly just Fluff.
Cadpoint,
I don't see the link in your posting. Maybe next time. I'd like to read it.
But, FedEx has a terminal here in Memphis, and twice daily parks 137 planes
of the Douglas MD11 type (big cargo haulers).
Between each plane,
there is a Lightning Rod shaped like an Umbrella, each about 100' tall,
to allow dissapation of static into the air.
This effectively raises the ground to the height of 100' aprox.
At least, that's the best explanation I've ever come across.
It is supposed to reduce lightning strikes,
and absorb those that get through directly in the tarmac Ufer.
In 2001,
I saw lightning hit our building with a roof full of rods,
sending a slight charge through the building, through the steel frame,
into a printer on the top floor,
and eventually passing through the printer port of 3 servers in IT.
We had TVSS on the power lines at the servers,
not the peripheral lines out the back.
For all the effort, loss of 3 out of 7 servers
cost us 250 thousand dollars a day in paper losses,
until the servers were replaced and uploaded.
Nobody was injured, however.
With lightning power,
you just take precautions and keep moving on.
In school, we once figured a typical diameter of lightning bolt,
typical voltage, typical current flow,
typical multi-strike (oscillating) count on bolts,
and none of it was pretty.
