Anyone know about personal lightning detectors for airborne use? The
best one appear to be Boltek's (boltek.com), particularly the LD-250.
This puppy is intended for ground mobile use, puts out lat/long coords
of strikes GPS style via RS-232. Software is provided to display on a
laptop, and feed in your GPS pos and hdg and you got poor man's (aka
homebuilder) StormScope or StrikeFinder, maybe?
I'm noticing many TV stations are providing realtime strike info on
their web sites, and Boltek is how they do it. In comparing strike
data to realtime radar on the net or Weather Channel, they seem
remarkably accurate. It does show the lack of smarts in relying on
StormScope or such for storm avoidance, as not all heavy downpours
have strikes (and vice versa). But given the safety problem with
unprotected, composite airframes, it would be nice to have a warning.
Rather than the laptop approach, I have a small monochrome graphic LCD
destined for the panel as a multi-function display, and this
additional display/alram duty is just additional programming, plus a
cable from the panel-mount GPS. Cheap, sunlight readable, color LCD's
are real soon now, too.
Regards,
Fred F., A063
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