Bird strike

[curtis]

While out flying this morning I had a close call with damaging my baby. During the landing flare I hit a bird with the leading edge. After cleaning the wing there was no visible damage. You can see in the picture the outline of the birds wing including the feathers which From the leading edge to the tip of what appears to be the wing tip is approx. 7".

[Geico266]

Very lucky!

I hit a bird on the 2nd flight take off. Hit right on he rivet line and left feathers and skin. No damage to the plane, but the bird was KIA.

[dealfair]

Ouch! It appears slow speed impact is what spared you from real damage. I've really slowed down my pattern speeds due to bird strikes. Seems to give us both time for avoidance and you just provided hard evidence to damage mitigation.

Good post & good luck!

Cheers,

[rockwoodrv9]

We hit a bird just after takeoff from STL a couple years ago in the company Citation. We landed and checked the winshield - damaged but didn't look that bad. $29k and 2 days later, we were back in the air again!

[Vlad]

Low speed is the lifesaver. I chopped couple of ornithopters last year but damages were not collateral. Now I fly much slower

[Robert Ramey]

Curtis,

Glad to see you didn?t receive any damage. So, are you going to put a kill marking under your canopy?

Rob

[curtis]

Rob,

I had not thought of a bird kill decal, I'll have to check into that.