OT: Bird Strike Video

[Jamie]

For your Friday morning enjoyment here's a video of two British pilot's in Florida picking up a hitchhiker while landing a C-172.

Click here for the video

This reminds me of when I was a student pilot. One of my friends soloed the day before me and on his FIRST SOLO, first take-off he speared a hawk on the pitot tube which of course caused his ASI to drop to zero. He landed uneventfully.

[L.Adamson]

A friend of mine who is building a second RV9-A, had a bird take out about 85% of the front windscreen of a Cessna 172 while returning home on a cross country flight.

The "drag" increased dramatically, and it was tough to barely maintain altitude for the 30 mile return to the airport. He figures, that if it hadn't been a solo flight, that he would have had to make an emergency landing on a road, as it wouldn't climb at all with one person aboard.

Once over the numbers, out of habit, he pulled the throttle to idle, and the plane sank immediately for a rather hard touchdown, before a bit of power application could recover the sink rate!

L.Adamson

[Brantel]

My instrument instructor/friend hit a large bird during his first 10 hours with his RV-7. He said he was doing about 160MPH when it hit. Somehow it missed the prop and hit the cowling on the top left. Inspection revealed that the baffling was damaged from the deflection of the cowling.

Lucky for him, the cowling had not been painted yet so he was able to fix the fiberglass. Other than the dent in the fiberglass, there were no other signs of the strike.

The pucker factor was high, real high he said....

[gbrasch]

This is why us old low level helicopter drivers wore helmets with our visors down, day or night!

[airguy]

During my initial PPL training I took out a sparrow on the prop just after rotation in a 172. Spread him (her? it?) all over the right side of the windshield. Started breathing again, made a normal pattern and landing, and taxied in to see the instructor laughing so hard he couldn't stand up. I was not quite as amused....

[Rick S.]

Isn't that what that wedge on the center of the Lear's windscreen is for? Cutting birds in half? Really!!!....call me silly but I think I read that somewhere.