While a strike can go through a plane, for instance, with minimal or even no damage, and the space shuttle during launch, and tall buildings and heavily grounded towers may not be hit often, I'm wondering if a very well grounded tower will dissipate the charge building up, and actually thwart a strike from happening?
I've spent many storms watching a 1000' tower here with lightning dancing all around expecting that the easy path to ground through the tower would make it very likely to be hit. Despite all the watching, never a strike seen, although some of the old old radio guys here in town and the engineers say it does get hit once in awhile.
So a properly grounded tower, big or small, might be draining away the charge and keeping a strike from occurring, or am I wrong on that one?
And I recall some antennas on mobile radios we used to install had a little round BB or bigger sized thing crimped on the end of the wire to cut down on noise, and the explanation was that the round surface dissipated any build up from travel through the air (rubbing cat syndrome, St. Elmo's fire in planes) and that sharp edges like a square cut across the wire makes it more likely to have radio noise.
Just curious about these two things.