Not my plane and I wasn't the pilot. We have lots of geese on the front range in northern Colorado, especially this time of year. I heard they had to cycle the gear three times before it would fully extend. Probably some pucker factor in the cockpit. I know they are hard to miss, but avoiding flight early and late might reduce the chances of hitting them. But as we all know, birds are birds, and they like to fly...

Is the goose ok?

quote:

Originally posted by airsoft guy:
Is the goose ok?

Last I heard, he was in the ICU, but the outlook was beak.

ICU I would want to see that bill!

Wow. That sure left a mark….

I'll bet that got his attention.

Both the wing AND the cowling/ gear? Multiple goose impacts.. or just one goose that got sliced and diced? I don't see feathers and goose remnants so I'm guessing it was multiple geese.

Damn, just noticed the wing got ripped open and the rib is crushed.

What did the prop look like?

quote:

Originally posted by airsoft guy:
Is the goose ok?

Back in the mid 2000's I was on a business trip with a guy. He was driving the rented Ford Probe. We were driving in rural Georgia on a misty night. Three white ducks were walking across the freeway. The lead and trailing ducks took off, the one in the middle just tilted its head at us as we hit it head on, right on the Ford logo. You could hear it roll under the floor and I looked in the side mirror and it looked like someone had shot a down pillow with a 12 ga.

Joe said "do you think it's ok? should we stop?"

After a moment to consider what he just asked, my response was "You just hit a DUCK with a Ford Probe doing 70 mph.... do you THINK it's ok?"

We didn't stop.

I'll bet they didn't either

^^^^
So... he "probed" the duck.

I quit flying at night in the Sacramento Valley between October and April for that very reason. The white ones are easier to see and avoid, the brown ones not so much. Sailed right through a flock of speckle belles in a friends 150 just after sunset one evening. Don't know how we didn't make contact.
They fold their wings and fall like stones when they panic. You're mostly ok at their level and above
OZ

quote:

Originally posted by Modern Day Savage:
I'll bet that got his attention.

Both the wing AND the cowling/ gear? Multiple goose impacts.. or just one goose that got sliced and diced? I don't see feathers and goose remnants so I'm guessing it was multiple geese.

Damn, just noticed the wing got ripped open and the rib is crushed.

What did the prop look like?

Prop was clean, no hits on it that I saw. And yes, I believe they hit 2 geese. I have not talked directly to the pilot. It was tied down next the the Skyhawk I was instructing out of today.

quote:

Originally posted by coloradohunter44:

quote:

Originally posted by airsoft guy:
Is the goose ok?

Last I heard, he was in the ICU, but the outlook was beak.

Icy unit is like cold storage.

^^^^ glad they got back on the ground ok. Lotta damage, but it could be worse.

Timing on this incident matches my own observations as only 2 days ago I recall hearing a flock of geese and thinking that it was the first time this Autumn I had heard geese, so they've been on the move along the Front Range. I think the prolonged mild WX has delayed their flights this year..not that they fly very far from golf courses and local lakes anymore.

quote:

Originally posted by Oscar Zulu:
I quit flying at night in the Sacramento Valley between October and April for that very reason. The white ones are easier to see and avoid, the brown ones not so much. Sailed right through a flock of speckle belles in a friends 150 just after sunset one evening. Don't know how we didn't make contact.
They fold their wings and fall like stones when they panic. You're mostly ok at their level and above
OZ

@ 25 years ago we had a husband and wife who were clients of ours, both instrument rated pilots and both NASA engineers. They owned a Piper Seneca, and we worked a discount deal with them where they would pull their plane in the hangar, rip it apart, and then we would perform the Annual on it, and then they would button it up.

I was talking to the husband and commented that the plane was in good shape and had a nice paint job, he grinned and told me about a night flight along the coast. They were @ 7 or 8K up, everything going smoothly and a nice quiet flight, then all of a sudden an explosion and the windscreen blew out. Took him a minute or so to assess their status and figure out they were still flying, before he realized that the cockpit and he were covered in feathers and what was left of the goose.

Two of my worst bird strikes have been around one in the morning, both above 10,000'. One crushed the radome and one windscreen in a Lear 35, and the other smashed the windshield in a 182.

I did have a perigrine falcon peel the leading edge of a 210 back to the spar.

Spraying crops, I hit what was probably in the thousands of birds; most did little other than leave a mark on the wing, some made it into the air vent above the cockpit and exploded down the back of my shirt or flight suit. I had live birds fling around in a B24 (PB4Y) a couple of times. They weren't happy.

It's really surprising what can make it past the propeller. I've seen birds get past the prop on ag aircraft only to get split in half on the wire cutter blade on the windscreen. I've found them stuffed into vents and inside the automatic flagman, in the past.

Funniest story I ever heard was an old duster I worked for years ago. He got a mormon cricket in his throat while spraying sulfur dust. He'd just opened his mouth and it went in with a lot of force. He tried to cough it up, but it wouldn't come up, and tried to swallow it, but it fought back. He tried to chew, but it was too far down. He finally managed to get it down, while spraying, but his story of the fight was entertaining.

quote:

Originally posted by sns3guppy:
It's really surprising what can make it past the propeller. I've seen birds get past the prop on ag aircraft only to get split in half on the wire cutter blade on the windscreen. I've found them stuffed into vents and inside the automatic flagman, in the past.

In a different life, we used to pop helium filled balloons. The trick was to dive on them, keeping in mind their climb rates and winds, and pop them with the outer 6-8" tips of the prop. Catch them too close to the hub and I was always amazed to watch them pass right through intact.

quote:

Funniest story I ever heard was an old duster I worked for years ago. He got a mormon cricket in his throat while spraying sulfur dust. He'd just opened his mouth and it went in with a lot of force. He tried to cough it up, but it wouldn't come up, and tried to swallow it, but it fought back. He tried to chew, but it was too far down. He finally managed to get it down, while spraying, but his story of the fight was entertaining.

Took my share of bug splatter while riding a bike , but never while flying, not even in an open cockpit.

Thirty, maybe thirty-five years ago, I had a Friday morning flight every week. I took a marine biologist, starting around sunrise at Sebastian Inlet (28th parallel) and flew him north along the Florida and Georgia coast to the 31st parallel while he did his beach survey, looking for sea turtles, dolphins, etc. that might have been caught in shrimpers' nets.

These flights were conducted just offshore at 200' MSL.

One Friday morning we were just east of St. Augustine when I noticed a flock of pelicans, my altitude, 11 o'clock. I turned a bit to the right to avoid the flock just as one of the birds separated from the group and flew straight into my prop.

I turned directly toward the St. Augustine airport, scanned for traffic to make sure that I was not cutting anybody off, and landed straight in, informing tower of what I was doing as soon as I had time to deal with the radio.

Taxied to a maintenance facility for damage assessment. Other than feathers and bird shit all over, the only damage was a shattered nose wheel fairing (C-182). Fortunately the hit was on the starboard side of the prop, so the blade was descending and drove the bird down. If it had been on the port side, the upward motion of the prop blade would likely have thrown the pelican back at the windshield, which might very well have shattered.

So help me understand this...goose grease is not an FAA-approved lubricant?

quote:

Originally posted by Modern Day Savage:

Took my share of bug splatter while riding a bike , but never while flying, not even in an open cockpit.

I've had a few wasps or bees in my helmet on a bike, or that ended up inside my jacket, and I've managed to ride through a swarm a couple of times. driving a few, too, where the bees ended up in the car. A couple of hot cigarette butts, too, on the bike.

I've known much more experienced jumpers who have never hit anything in flight, but maybe twice in freefall I've hit what might have been june bugs, or something like that, and have fallen past some largish birds.

Most of the time in flight, birds will try to dive to get away, which is how I ended up hitting the Falcon in the 210. The birds in the field, when spray, rise up. I suspect they don't hear the airplane coming due to the low altitude and sound footprint, especially in a thick crop like wheat or corn. When they are startled, they rise up en masse, and it sounds like popcorn.

In freefall, they don't seem to sense the jumper is coming, from above, though a jumper does make quite a bit of noise even before the canopy is open. I've never seen it be an issue under canopy. I think the reason it happens so rarely to jumpers is just a matter of odds.

What interested me more than night or other circumstances, was birds encountered in the cloud.

quote:

Originally posted by architect:
So help me understand this...goose grease is not an FAA-approved lubricant?

Oh, it is, but unfortunately, the FAA inspectors aren't very gentle.

Not that I'd want to find out, but I wonder how much impact that wing damage has on flight characteristics.

Lucky the front cowl damage didn't impede gear deployment.

One time while driving my truck in the summer I was hit by a wasp. It smacked the driver side rear view mirror and bounced into the cab and right down the front of my shirt. The mirror impact killed it instantly, but I was in a mild panic until I realized it was DOA.

quote:

Originally posted by P250UA5:
Not that I'd want to find out, but I wonder how much impact that wing damage has on flight characteristics.

On that airplane, probably not a lot. At slow speeds, it would certainly cause an asymmetrical stall, require extra rudder and aileron (and consequently likely a difference in a stall break unaccelerated, and a higher accelerated stall).

I've seen a lot of damage in wire strikes, inflight hail, etc, and an entire inboard leading edge on a Twin Otter that folded back to form a reverse curve airscoop above the wing, without a significant change or loss of control.

On the other hand, sometimes very minor changes can have significant effects. On a thick slow airfoil like that (in my experience), not a lot of control issue is likely to be had.