One Monday morning en-route to Kinloss from St Mawgan via the Hebrides range in a TT18... We were streaming the Rushton, in cloud, while flying north parallelling the coast.
Happily listening to radio 1 on the ADF I heard those ominous crackling sounds.
I saw the lightning coming straight at me and it struck about 6 inches in front of the canopy, ran through the aircraft, down the cable and blasted the target to pieces.
The sequence as I remember it was a loud 'Bang', I said 'SH*T' rather loudly, the aircraft lurched violently and the ensueing silence was broken by a voice from the back saying 'are you still there'.
That was Monday, on Tuesday I returned from the range with a bird strike on the starboard tip tank. Wednesday another lightning strike. Guess it wasn't my week so Thursday instead of flying we did a full compass swing on the aircraft!!!
Friday returned to St Mawgan via the range without a problem.
I suppose streaming 5 miles of lightning conductor was asking for trouble!
