Talk about a wake up call, still in phase 1 testing with 36 hrs. on my new 8, some friends and family came to the airport tonight to see my plane fly. I take off with a pretty good climb to show them what she'll do, hold it at 2500 fpm till I reach pattern alt, level off and do a normal pattern for a low approach to give them a look. Crosswind went well as I kept the speed down to about 80 knots allowing the spam can in the pattern plenty of room, downwind was as usual but I extended to give SC plenty of room, when SC did his touch and go, I turned base and announced low approach only and started to build speed in a shallow base to final turn, when speed approached 190 knots I retarded throttle a little and lined up perfectly for runway 1 and announced once again low approach only maintaining 190 knots for the shallow descent, all is well till about 100 feet off the deck when (bam!), a black silhouette of some sort of bird bounced off my windscreen 
. Talk about an adrenaline rush, I immediately pulled throttle and slowed to 90 knots and executed a go around very slowly and landed to survey the damage, my friends all came running over to say wow what a fast pass not knowing I had slowed because of the bird. After a long inspection of the airplane we could not find any damage whatsoever. Talk about luck, I guess that Todd's canopy is really as strong as he says it is. I would tell you guys to look out for birds but I know of no way I could have seen him coming, just glad I'm not cutting my windscreen off to replace as that would be a major JOB!
. Talk about an adrenaline rush, I immediately pulled throttle and slowed to 90 knots and executed a go around very slowly and landed to survey the damage, my friends all came running over to say wow what a fast pass not knowing I had slowed because of the bird. After a long inspection of the airplane we could not find any damage whatsoever. Talk about luck, I guess that Todd's canopy is really as strong as he says it is. I would tell you guys to look out for birds but I know of no way I could have seen him coming, just glad I'm not cutting my windscreen off to replace as that would be a major JOB!
