Re static electricity on an antenna....
Wind, simple dry wind can induce enough voltage on a ~100 foot, 30 foot off the ground, random wire antenna to light neon bulbs. And that's with insulated wire.
Rain, snow, sleet, freezing rain (dear God freezing rain on steroids!) and lowly flying insects can all induce, oh yea, almost forgot birds, can all induce static electrical charges on antennas.
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Helicopter blades can produce enough static when spinning to at least knock a man out cold.
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I installed a 10k bleeder resistor on my first 100 foot antenna that bled off most casual static.
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Now distant lightning, like distant 100 miles, could cause neon bulbs to explode, lightning at 30 miles would cause NE-1 (or was it NE-2 since I'm the only one who appears to have heard of NE-1) to explode like a blasting cap or shotgun.
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We video taped blasting caps going off in the air for a mine safety project. Very exciting project, very spooky project. We used Vietnam Conflict era "clackers" designed to set off claymore directional mines. There was something fun about pressing the lever on a clacker and having a blasting cap go off. We must has sat off about 200 for BATF and the US mine safety agency. The campus police closed off the largest parking lot on a Sunday afternoon and had men keeping lookyloos away.
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Now imagine that at 2:00AM on a school night. My parents weren't exactly upset, more concerned. The next afternoon Daddy installed ceramic based knife switches right out of a Frankenstein movie set, two switches, one to short the antenna to ground, the other to short the radio antenna to chassis.
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Yea my life has been a tad too interesting at times.
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[Were you ever silly enough to ride curled up in a heavy equipment tire down a 1000 foot slope of a hill 600 feet above local terrain? And end up in a river. Thought not. Now my parents were really upset over that one but I was 8 and my idiot cousins were 16 and thought it'd be a fun joke. It was actually quite fun. I'm told the tire bounced about 50 feet high before hitting the water. I had more trouble getting out of the tire before drowning in 20 feet of water then anything else. I was giggling as I swam ashore, my mother was sobbing, that was the moment I realized "Ought oh ... done messed up here.
My father made my cousins pull the tire from the river and cut it up with a oxy-acetylene torch."
