Original poster: <dgoodfellow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
I did see this once by eye in a natural lightning strike. I was traveling
north in stop and go traffic, in west central Florida, an area that has
particulary robust lightning. I had the window down on the car, and I was
watching an approaching storm head. There came a bolt close enough to hear
the arc as it connected with the ground, so I quickly turned my head to
the left, to see the arc. It was one of those moments that I caught just
right, because as I watched the bolt decay, it didn't just "shut off" as
they often seem to, rather, it became segmented like a string of sausages,
or a dashed vertical line. The links shrunk into smaller and smaller
segments, until finally I saw what could be best compared to a string of
pearls. The ball segment lasted only a split second, then they all
vanished. I was probably only able to see this because of it's near
proximity and it was in the mid afternoon, so there was not a severe
difference in contrast between the daytime sky and the arc of lightning.
Not quite Tesla coil related, but I thought I would share this
experience with you since the one frame of the film reminded my of that
experience. It was quite amazing how the solid line became so perfectly
like this ---------- to ............
Dave Goodfellow
----- Original Message ----- From: "Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, May 03, 2005 8:46 PM
Subject: Beading caught on film.
Original poster: "Mike" <induction@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Hi All,
Going through the pictures, this one
is a photo made off one of the 16 mm frames, caught a discharge
in the beading mode. Another strike hits plane elswhere but the
beading is of more interest, see topof picture.
www.hot-streamer.com/mike2004/Beading3.jpg
Mike (Re-Posting this, prior sent 2:46 AM Eastern, May 3, 2005, never
made it)