It was raining heavily. I was sound asleep at about 2AM when there was a
really violent KA-BOOM. It propelled me out of bed and woke me enough to
check the house for lightning damage (none) and to switch my antenna to a
dummy position (yes, I know this does not do much good, especially after the
fact).

You know those "gift bags" (looking like a small shoping bag) that play
tunes when a certain spot is squeezed? They usually play "Merry Christmas"
or "Happy Birthday". One of these bags was in the bedroom, and had not been
touched for months. It started playing (without being touched) just after
the KA-BOOM.

A second major KA-BOOM thunder/lightning happened about 10 minutes later.
The bag started playing again. Both times, the bag played a normal cycle of
the tune and then quit.

There was no damage anywhere in the area and my Orion seems OK.

The OT question is what kind of antenna effect (in the gift bag) would
activate it? While it was raining heavily, there was no sense of heavy
humidity in the house. No other electronics were affected, as far as I could
tell.

Bill
W2WO

In "Bill Ogden"
wrote:

The OT question is what kind of antenna effect (in the gift bag) would
activate it?

Maybe not an antenna effect at all, but the pressure wave that produced
the KA-BOOM pushed the switch.

--
Bert Hyman St. Paul, MN

On Jun 20, 1:45*pm, Bert Hyman wrote:
"Bill Ogden"

wrote:
The OT question is what kind of antenna effect (in the gift bag) would
activate it?

Maybe not an antenna effect at all, but the pressure wave that produced
the KA-BOOM pushed the switch.

--
Bert Hyman * * *St. Paul, MN *

Lightning can do some pretty strange things. I was given a RS color
computer years ago after it had been on the receiving end of a
lightning strike.
Already having one of these computers I proceded to check it out by
replacing the chips in my computer one at a time with the ones in the
fried computer( I know, not very smart). Well at the the end of all
the chip swapping my computer still worked. Power supply on the
damaged computer checked OK. A closer inspection of the circuit board
showd that some traces underneath the processor chip had ben
vaporized. Repairing these traces yielded a working computer. How the
lightning burned out these traces without frying the rest of the
computer was beyound my understanding.


Jimmie

"Bill Ogden" wrote in message
...
It was raining heavily. I was sound asleep at about 2AM when there was a
really violent KA-BOOM. It propelled me out of bed and woke me enough to
check the house for lightning damage (none) and to switch my antenna to a
dummy position (yes, I know this does not do much good, especially after
the
fact).

You know those "gift bags" (looking like a small shoping bag) that play
tunes when a certain spot is squeezed? They usually play "Merry
Christmas"
or "Happy Birthday". One of these bags was in the bedroom, and had not
been
touched for months. It started playing (without being touched) just after
the KA-BOOM.

A second major KA-BOOM thunder/lightning happened about 10 minutes later.
The bag started playing again. Both times, the bag played a normal cycle
of
the tune and then quit.

There was no damage anywhere in the area and my Orion seems OK.

The OT question is what kind of antenna effect (in the gift bag) would
activate it? While it was raining heavily, there was no sense of heavy
humidity in the house. No other electronics were affected, as far as I
could
tell.

Could just have been the strong RF in the air. I had something related
happen to me. We have a Teddy Bear that sings "We Wish You a Merry
Christmas" for 20 seconds whenever you press a button on it. We don't take
out the batteries before stowing it overhead in the garage.

In March, I was experimenting with a 40m wire antenna draped over the garage
roof. Do I have to tell you what happened whenever I keyed up?
(Eventually, I climbed the ladder and took out the bear's batteries.)

"Sal"

In article
,
JIMMIE wrote:

On Jun 20, 1:45*pm, Bert Hyman wrote:
"Bill Ogden"

wrote:
The OT question is what kind of antenna effect (in the gift bag) would
activate it?

Maybe not an antenna effect at all, but the pressure wave that produced
the KA-BOOM pushed the switch.

--
Bert Hyman * * *St. Paul, MN *

Lightning can do some pretty strange things. I was given a RS color
computer years ago after it had been on the receiving end of a
lightning strike.
Already having one of these computers I proceded to check it out by
replacing the chips in my computer one at a time with the ones in the
fried computer( I know, not very smart). Well at the the end of all
the chip swapping my computer still worked. Power supply on the
damaged computer checked OK. A closer inspection of the circuit board
showd that some traces underneath the processor chip had ben
vaporized. Repairing these traces yielded a working computer. How the
lightning burned out these traces without frying the rest of the
computer was beyound my understanding.


Jimmie

guessing a large and fast ammount of lightning induced current
traveld along the ckt trace it got hot and fried creating the
open voltage no longer could pass and so never reached the
other parts ie chips etc


so prob by luck you had enough current to damage the trace dosn't
take much, but not enough to arc over and contine damage