Bonding together small bits of metal inside a sea of plastic insulator will
accomplish nothing except add weight to your airframe unless you
have an array of static discharge wicks. No Europas I am aware off have
them. The best thing for a builder to do regarding lightning strikes
is to make sure there are no voids in the layups where water can infiltrate.
The water will turn to steam and explode. Aside from that, Do not
fly near Cu. If Cu are unavoidable, just remember: Flying IS avoidable.
In this I respectfully disagree with David. As a former electrical engineer, I
would also have to say, I can not see any benefit to bonding wingtip to
wingtip, etc. The goal can not be to conduct a strike - you can not! Rather,
the goal of bonding to discharge wicks is to bleed off areas of air friction
static charge back to the atmosphere, thus avoiding being an attractive
nuisance for lightning.
There is no such this as "earth" on a composite airplane. The only ground
is the negative battery terminal. That's it.
It's not a house! There's no neutral (white wire) and earth ground (green
wire) dichotomy. Just make all grounds short, fat and tight.
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Ira N224XS
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