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Sources for lightning protection hardware

Delta Lightning Arrestors, Inc., P.O. Box 1084, Big Springs, TX 79721.

PolyPhaser Corp., P.O. Box 9000, Minden, NV 89423-9000.

Cushcraft Corporation, P.O. Box 4680, 48 Perimeter Road, Manchester, NH 03108.

Information sources

Insurance Information Institute.

Edison Electric Institute.

Lightning Protection Institute.

Underwriters Laboratory.

National Fire Protection Association/

Books available at your public library:

All About Lightning, Martin A. Uman, Dover Publications, 31 East 2nd St., Mineola, NY 11501, ISBN 0-486-25237-X.

Lightning, Martin A. Uman, Dover Publications, ISBN 0-486-64575-4.

The Lightning Discharge, Martin A. Uman, National Geophysics Series Vol.39, Academic Press, Inc., division of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, ISBN 0-12-708350-2. (Uman is a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Florida, Gainesville.)

Violent Storms, Jon Erickson, TAB Books, Blue Ridge Summit, PA 17294-0214, ISBN 0-8306-9042-5.

Coiled Lightning: From the April 1994 "Letters":

Editor: Barry Willis's lightning-strike horror story in the February issue states that "[t]he final line of defense is the electrical outlet itself" and recommends MOV surge protectors, ferrite chokes, isolation transformers, and the like. This is all well and good, but the "final line of defense" is actually the power cord itself.

Here's a tweak that gladdens the heart—it doesn't cost a cent, takes three minutes to perform the procedure on your entire system, and, most importantly, it works: Just form a neat coil with the surplus slack in each of your power cords. I've actually seen a household with coiled cords after a lightning strike. Each coiled power cord was burned through and severed at the wall-outlet end of the coil. The juice never got to the components.—Martin R. Needleman, Annapolis, MD