Whenever the subject of lightning and composite aircraft is raised, Like ChrisJ1800, I refer people to the AAIB report on the Dunstable ASK21.
The things which stuick in my mind from this report are:
- Although forecast, the lightning strike which destroyed the glider was the first to be seen or heard by the witnesses that day.
- There are two types of lightning, positive and negatively charged. The one in this case was the more damaging positive type.
- Light aircraft and gliders tend not to have the metal mesh built into the layup that larger aircraft have for lightning protection.
- Composite aircraft without metal mesh in the lay up are little more than capacitors waiting to be (over) charged.
It is to the AAIB's credit that they took on this accident investigation, rather than leaving it to the less well resourced BGA as they were entitled to do, and investigated they it as thoroughly as they did.
Ann Welch, in The Story of Gliding, recounted the case of some pre-war German pilots who entered a Cu-Nim with the intention of setting height gain records. Several of their gliders broke up, and the ones who took to their parachutes were later found dead as skeletons with their flesh stripped off them by the hail, possibly having been up and down in the cu-nim for a considerable time.
When learning to hang glide, one thing that was always imipressed on me was 'It's always better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air, than vice versa'.