Eventful flight

[gmpaul]

After filling up with some cheap fuel at LBX I?m leveled off back to BYY short hop 15 min. I felt something moving on the top of my head and it?s not my earmuff strap. So I reach up and brush it off? this is where things got exciting. A Bumble BEE comes fly around form my right shoulder eye level between the wind screen and my nose. I know this thing needed position light, black and yellow, nose art said Kill, samurai sword for a stinger a thousand steely eyes look at me as he slowly circled my head. I?m telling my self fly the airplane, and stay calm that?s a lot easier said than done. That last 6 or 7 minutes of flight had to be and hour. Just as soon as my wheel touched the canopies was slid open. After putting my 9 back in the hanger getting a cold water looking at my baby what do I see a bumble bee fly out of my plane an out the hanger door. Plenty of excitement for one day.
Has anything like this happend to any one else?

[sbal0906]

That's a good test of the nerves!

I haven't experienced anything like that but around where I live we usually get tons of mosquitoes. Though, not this year because it's been so dry. But they usually get into the plane by the swarm and I usually spend a part of pre-flight with the door closed, swatting mosquitoes. You can never get all of them and they always seem to come out to annoy you as you're making a landing.

[FredMagare]

Originally Posted by gmpaul

...this thing needed position light, black and yellow, nose art said Kill, samurai sword for a stinger a thousand steely eyes look at me as he slowly circled my head.

Now THAT's a fearsome bee!

[Vlad]

I had a green passenger the other day. He was sitting quiet all 30 minutes (we went really high) and exited as soon as I opened the canopy. Never seen him again.

[Neal@F14]

I once took off from an airport in northeast Arkansas and on the climbout, saw a wasp flying around in the Cherokee's cabin with me. I figured if I was gonna get stung, I'd just deal with it since I didn't feel like wasting the fuel and time to go back and land and try to get it out of my airplane. I climbed eventually up to 10500' and apparently the wasp didn't cope all that well with the altitude and went to sleep somewhere in the back of the plane. After I landed at home here in W.Falls TX, and was unloading all my camping gear out of the plane, the wasp woke up and sluggishly flew out the door and away.... a awfully long way from its home territory.

[David Paule]

Spent a weekend camping in a very rural area just below the Southern Rockies, and on the way home several huge flies came out and flew around. Big things!

Fortunately I had my oxygen bottle. I went high and they went to sleep.

That was probably my fastest ever descent. As I taxied in, they woke up and flew out the open window.

Dave

[N941WR]

I was deathly allergic to bee stings, to the point that prior to going through the five year sting therapy program I was stung and woke up three hours later in the ER. Although I?ve been stung a few times since completing the therapy, it is still a very unpleasant but not life threatening event.

Years ago when I was working on my PPL my instructor noticed a bee in the cockpit of our 152. We quickly landed, he pulled the mixture and rudder us off the runway between landing lights. As soon as we stopped rolling we bailed out, ran about 20 feet, turned around and stood there staring at the plane, he just off the right wing and I just off the left.

The tower watching this called the fire trucks, which arrived in full gear ready to go to work. It turned out that we were both severely allergic and without saying a word did exactly the same thing.

One of the firemen did shoo the bee out of the plane and we were able to continue our lesson.

Here is another, not so funny story.

This spring we were heading west, over the Appalachian mountains at 10.5 on our way to Chattanooga to visit Grandma. Our son sleeping comfortably in the baby seat strapped in the baggage compartment when my wife notice a large wasp crawling on the canopy, directly above The Boy. We don?t know yet if he inhareted my bee, wasp, and ?mixed? vespid allergies so him getting stun could be a life and death issue.

At this point we had two options; circle down and land at the small country airport directly below us or continue on for the last 15 or 20 minutes to our destination where we could land and have an emergency medical crew waiting for us with a short ride to a hospital, if need bee (pun intended).

I elected to continue on to our destination as it would have taken close to 10 minutes just to cycle down and land. Other than the wasp falling on our son and flying back to the top of the canopy, which almost gave my wife a heart attack, no one was stung and the wasp flew out once we opened the canopy.

Lesson learned, don?t panic, fly the plane, and make sound / rational decisions.

[LifeofReiley]

putting screens on the NACA vent (scat hose end) is a must to keep these kind of pests out of the vents.

[N941WR]

Originally Posted by LifeofReiley

putting screens on the NACA vent (scat hose end) is a must to keep these kind of pests out of the vents.

Yep, and I have them. In my case, the wasp must have been in the plane before we took off.

[gmpaul]

Thanks for the tip Reiley

I wrote this for humor but it defiantly wasn't funny while it was happening.