Ball Lightning

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <Zimtesla-at-aol-dot-com>

DC Cox wrote: 
>As kids, we used to watch ball lightning form on a regular basis as a 
> thunderstorm approached under the "V" of a ground wire on a 600 ft. tall FM 
> transmitting tower in the Baraboo Bluffs.  It would grow in size and finally 
> break off and float around for 20-30 sec.  Some lasted as long as a minute. 
> Some would break off and actually come at us.  We ducked behind something 
> but as kids we thought it was great fun.  No one ever got burned or 
> anything. 
> 
> There was always a huge pile of dry leaves sucked up near the base of the 
> tower after the ball lightning formed which leads me to believe it is a DC 
> or electrostatic effect.  The FM power was only 10 kw so that isn't very 
> much. 
> 
> The grounding was changed after one ball came through a wall and nearly 
> almost hit the radio station's engineer.  They got sick of it terrorizing 
> their children as they lived in a small home in the transmitter shack under 
> the tower.  Rebonding the grounds changed something and no one has seen it 
> since. 
> 
> Dr. Resonance 

Question - was there always lightning when the ball formed? A recent article in
Science News by some professor from New Zealand claims it requires a lightneing
stirke to form and is the result of silicon vapors. Your observation seem to
refute this theory. 

I have a copy of a magazine article written in the 1920's by a person who was
running an Ouden coil that produced ball lightning on two occasions. Both times
the pea sized ball floated about and then hit the fellow's brother with some
significant results. This was published in the TCBA newsletter. 

In  one of the report tapes by Richard Hull, some fellows in California
reported about a ball lightning that formed in a rotory spark gap which was
made from a metal fan blade. While the actual event was not on the tape the
fellows stated that the ball floated around for a few seconds then hit the
power outlet and shorted it. 

It would be nice to be able to study this stuff if it could be reproduced on
demand. 
Jim