[kb2vxa]

You think you're Ben Franklin or something? What a bunch of comedians around here! Eh, the regulator chip you chose depends on the polarity of the lightning bolt, if your collector is low it will be negative cloud positive ground, polarity reverses with altitude but I'm not keen on standing atop a skyscraper in a thunderstorm so I'll let YOU do it. Now maybe Amp will explain how to charge a battery with a spark plug.

The storm is nearing it's peak, Igor release the kites. Crazy am I? We'll SEE whether I'm crazy or not! It's alive. It's alive... IT'S ALIVE!!!!! (hysterical laughter) IT'S ALIIIIIVE!!!!!

Speaking of spark plugs a long long time ago I used one to discharge static buildup on a long wire antenna but these days spark plugs have gone high tech and don't work nearly as well as the old copper core ones that came with a '55 Chevy attached. Resistor plugs and high performance ones with air gaps up inside the insulator require much higher voltage to fire so if it's an air gap you want build your own.

Getting back to the detector one thing that never occurred to me was using LED volume indicators popular with hi-fi enthusiasts at the time. Maybe you can scrounge a bar indicator from an old stereo and experiment with it, worth a try anyway. I guess I'm a dinosaur, an analog man in a digital world, oh well.

I leave you with this to ponder, a fireman named Smokey Stover. Now what was the name of his dog?