Possible Lightning Strike?

On the flight home from Sun 'n Fun, I discovered several issues with my plane and I am trying to determine if I need to dig deeper for potential other issues yet to be discovered.

• TruTrak AP roll servo is no longer executing roll commands. It will engage, but just holds the stick in whatever position it is in. Pitch and Yaw still operate correctly. Continuity has been confirmed between the control head and servo.
• One or both of the TCW heater actuators was in the open position. A recycle of the control corrected this.
• GTN 650 was registering touches in the incorrect location. An in-flight reboot corrected the issue.
• Aveo tail strobe/position light failed. Bench testing confirmed.

Everything else seems to be working as designed.

The morning that we left, there was a pretty bad thunderstorm that came through. We had one lightning strike that was so close, we felt the ground shake. Is it possible that the proximity of the strike caused these issues? If so, would grounding the plane while parked outside help in the future?

From my experience, grounding the plane would not likely help if it were a direct strike. Ground is a good idea for other reasons, like static electricity and possibly a non-direct strike.

Look for arcing between metal parts.

We had a UH-60 take a direct hit while on the ramp and grounded. The tail-rotor gearbox was seized and the entire drive train had to be replaced.

I don't think it was a direct strike since we were in a tent next to the plane.

EMP electro magnetic pulse can occur from a close lightning strike. A friend had a lightning strike the road next to his car on the freeway. It destroyed the electronic controller (ECU?) and his car stopped running. He was able to steer to the shoulder and got towed in for ECU replacement.
As to grounding, it is grounded through the tires which contain considerable amount of conductive carbon

Aveo has agreed to replace the tail strobe under the lifetime warranty. That is excellent customer service!!!

I concur that damage can occur without a direct strike. Many years ago, we had a lightning strike somewhere in the vicinity or our backyard. When we went to the kitchen in the morning, there was black smoke damage on the wall next to one our outlets. The voltage likely travelled from the ground, up through a ground wire and somehow like the air molecule density at that particular outlet.

The neighbor had a couple of exploded kitchen outletss. I suppose the GFCI circuitry smoked.

I think from this experience, I would rather not have the aircraft grounded and live with the damage caused by static dissipation, as providing a direct path to the energy source produces more risk than gain. If directly struck, I would think a ground would be highly valuable. On the flipside, I would expect an ungrounded aircraft would not be directly struck with so many grounded targets nearby and from my experience above, the ground will introduce energy fron near by, non-direct hit strikes.

Larry

I used to work at the Kennedy Space Center and they had the launch areas surrounded with "electric field mills" with which they could predict lightning. this wasn't my area of expertise, but I think they had some airborne mills, too, that they used before shuttle launches. These mills measured the static charge building up in the atmosphere which could be ~1000 volts per meter before a strike. The Shuttle launch commit criteria were that "all field mills within 5 nautical miles of the flight path and at least one field mill within 2 nautical miles of the cloud center read between -100 volts per meter and +500 volts per meter."

So even though there was no lightning strike, it seems possible that your equipment could have suffered from static buildup. I have not heard of this happening much, though.

Leaving SNF on Saturday we also experienced an anomaly with our Tru-Trak autopilot. After engaging nav and alt. hold it would unexpectedly make an exterme nose dive. Did it three times until we flew manual all the way back to our fuel stop in Bay Minette. After we took off and re-engaged it worked perfectly all the way home.