Anyone experienced St Elmo's Fire?

[nosewheel]

Seen it many times. The most awesome display was on the L-1011. The windows are like picture windows and its kind of like watching a big screen TV. If I'm not mistaken there the largest aircraft window made. I could be wrong though...I was wrong once before. The only bad thing about it was we were usually getting the crap beat out of us during the display. The other part of the show sometimes included a thirty foot long fireball shooting forward from the nose of the aircraft and rings of fire around the engine cowlings. It usually gets the passengers a little excited. The neatest thing I ever experienced was when the Co-Pilots front window delaminated at 350 at night while we were all half asleep. When the thing let go there was a very loud BANG !! then it shot a baseball size ball of fire at the FO's face from the lower part of the windscreen where it meets the glaresheild. WOW !! that really woke us up fast.We found out later that it happened when the crack in the windscreen when through the window heat strip and caused the high voltage fireball.The Co-Pilot was quite OK just a little shooken for a few beers.

 

[avbug]

Usually blue, sometimes green, sometimes yellowish, sometimes white or whitish. I've never had a fireball roll down the interior or spark at me, but I'd sure like to see it.

 

[mckpickle]

Had it on rare occasions in the ATR. Mostly COLD winter nights flying high with some really dry snow. Then One time Me and another guy were taking a ATR 72 across the pond to germany. We were to stop in Goose Bay for a final tank up then go direct across the pond at 25,000ft. About 200 miles before goose bay the other guys points at my window and says look. I gave the obligitory "cool" as I noticed the small blue light flashes, and went back to some chart I was reading. Then I thought wait, we are in the clear, no snow and its a nice night, so why..................................................... As i look up the color had changed from irridecent blue to yellow and red as we realized the heating element was arcing. As we reached up to turn it off it sounded like someone let loose a shotgun as the whole window shattered. Thank god it was only the outer pane of glass which we were later told was not structural. We followed the QRH, depresurized and went down to 9000ft. Had it happened mid way over the atlantic......bubye.

 

[Simon Says]

JB Hewlett

St. Elmos Fire is the name of the movie that mysteriously plays on the windscreen of the aircraft. Good flick, but distracting during flight.

 

[Typhoon1244]

Saw it once or twice in the Brasilia. The CRJ will turn out an impressive display climbing through high clouds.

It was pretty interesting for the first couple of minutes...then it got kind of annoying. (Maybe the "magic" is starting to wear off me...)

 

[Captain X]

Saw it on the windscreen of the E145 coming out of MSP one night. FO saw it all over her side and asked what it was. We were IMC with embedded activity all around us climbing thru FL210. At about FL280, she asked me if I had forgotten to turn the landing lights off (they were). I asked her why and she said, "It looks like we have the high beams on." I looked out front and sure enough, there was a big beam of light extending out into the clouds in front of us. I raised my seat up to see a basketball-sixed orb of blue electical energy on the tip of the radome.

At that point, we were one big lightning rod.....I'm glad we had all the dischargers and bonding straps in the right places!

Used to see it on the tip tanks of Lears all the time when fling thru cloud up high at night.

Falcon 20 gets it kickin pretty good too on the flat panel in the center windscreen.

The precip static drives me nuts though!

 

[Lindy]

Last night....

Last night we were picking our way through the thunderstorms that stretched across the midwest -- our route was MDW to MKC -- and had St. Elmo's Fire to entertain us both ways.....

The best display was topping thunderstorms at 430 (did I say we really wanted higher??) and we had beams of light from both tips about 6' in front of the aircraft in addition to a beam of light off the nose of the aircraft and the glareshield was full of color. Funny thing, in the lear, I have only seen blue. Would be neat to see some other color.

And, Is it a bad thing when you ask ATC if anyone has been through in the last 20 minutes and inquired as to their ride and the very nice Air Traffic Controller individual states "[Our Call Sign] NO ONE has been through here in 4 hours....." Yes, all the airlines still flying got a chuckle out of that.....I guess everyone else decided to deviate...did I say freight dog?

I am very fortunate to see it weekly (and of late, it has been dialy with my routes). IT is a beautiful phenonemon.

 

[falcondriver]

The best I ever saw was in a cargo Falcon 20 at 370. We had just topped the cells and started a steep descent into MCI. It was about 1 inch wide bolts of light across all 3 panels of the windshield. They started at the bottom, they were about 5 inches apart. I had to grab the copilots hat and put it on, so I could see. The funniest part is when the copilot saw it and yelled holly **** what is that. He had never seen it before...
FD