I was running the late shift and working in local (The tower) one night caring out some Mincom’s servicing when we had an amazing storm.
Suddenly a bolt of lightening hit the runway and ran down its length it was a sight to see, then another bolt hit the wooden antennae tower next to the transmitter building at the far side of the airfield. Inside the building was a couple of my guys doing monthly servicing on the transmitters which involved changing the rear air filters. To do this you had to withdraw the transmitter cases from the rack to gain access to the filter. When the lightening strike hit the wooden mast it travelled down the antennae feeders into the transmitter building and jumped across onto the transmitter racks causing a large flash and bang as the lightening found earth through the racks. At this point both the lads came running out of the building like scolded cats into a heavy downpour. When I saw them I tried to ring to see if they were alright and tell them to suspend servicing until the storm had passed and come back to the tower. Neither of the lads would re-enter the building to answer the phone it just rang and they just stood outside dazed getting soaking wet when eventually I managed to contacted them via the Storno radio in the rover I asked them why they had stopped outside in the downpour and not return to the section they explained that they had suffered temporary blindness from the flash and could not see never mind drive the rover back to the section hence the reason for standing out in the rain. When the storm passed we returned to the site to inspect the damage. One of the transmitters was used for a system called forward relay on the 243Mhz distress frequency. Luckily this transmitter was the one the lads were servicing when the lightening struck so it was sat on the bench inside the building, however all of the other transmitters were still in their positions in the rack and all had been damaged by the strike. We reinstalled the 243Mhz transmitter back into the rack and restored the service, West Drayton who remotely controlled the distress transmitter explained that the storm had knocked out most of the transmitters under their controlled in the Yorkshire area as the storm passed over and having Church Fenton back on-line gave them the ability to continue this highly important aircraft emergency service.
Next day the morning shift were greeted by 8 broken transmitters that had to packed up and returned to North Luffenham for repair.
"With speed to the mark"