Bird Hunting
I woke up early this morning, did some preparation and left the house to do some bird hunting, and — yes — I got one. Too bad I was intending to fly to Tuscon!
I did wake up early this morning; I was up at 5:20 and shortly thereafter downstairs getting a weather briefing, writing a navigation log and flight plan in preparation for my second cross country flight, this time to Ryan (KRYN) airport on the western side of Tuscon. On my first cross country flight I didn’t do the whole glut of prep; it was somewhat of a last minute decision to fly to Pinal (KMZJ) right north of Tuscon. Because of that, and because the last trip proved my skill at radio navigation via VORs, I was going to be flying today with nothing but a compass, a clock and my eyes: dead reckoning and pilotage. So I had a very detailed flight plan, a bunch of waypoints and landmarks picked out, all of my wind correction angles calculated and so forth.
I got to the airport at 7:30, ready to depart. My plane didn’t return from its earlier patron until 8:00 so that delayed things a bit, but after preflighting the plane and arranging my maps in the cockpit my instructor and I did our engine test (run-up) and started our takeoff roll.
I kept the plane on the center-line, correcting for the wind across the runway. Engine instruments looked good. I was waiting for the airspeed indicator to reach the plane’s takeoff speed (55 knots) and at the same time watching a pair of birds about to fly across the runway in front of me. The birds were green-colored, flying right-to-left at about head height. I was thinking, “Turn, birds, turn! Climb, birds, climb!” but I must not have been thinking it loudly enough - they hadn’t noticed the danger. I couldn’t swerve the plane around them - planes don’t work like that on the ground. I had used up half the runway already, I probably couldn’t stop the plane before running out of runway and hitting the fence. I was committed to taking off. The plane reached 55 knots right at the time the birds realized the danger and began to climb. Just as the nose-wheel lost contact with the runway, the lower bird went through the full throttle prop.
There wasn’t any noticeable noise in the cockpit, but the windscreen got dirty. I was about 30 feet off the ground, correcting our course to hold us along the runway’s heading when Jason asked the question I didn’t want to hear: “Did we just hit that bird?” I pointed to a mass of tissue and red-yellow fluid in one spot of the windscreen and asked, “Turn around?” Jason replied, “We just had a bird strike, James. Yeah, we want to check that out.” I keyed the radio and said, “Stellar Traffic, Cessna 20519 is turning left crosswind, returning to runway 17. Stellar.”
Immediately a call came back over the radio from the guy behind us in line for takeoff, “Did you guys just hit a bird?” Jason replied, “Affirmative, struck our prop. 519-er is returning home.” They responded, “That’s what we thought - we saw the birds and then we saw this big poof! It looked like it exploded.” Jason: “Yeah, it exploded - all over our windscreen.”
I did a normal landing despite the reduced visibility out the front windscreen due to what-formerly-was-a-bird. We taxied back to the parking area and when I stopped the engine and the propeller stopped spinning we could see yellow nastiness coating the cockpit-facing edge on both blades. On top of that, the windscreen was gooey and the passenger-side wing strut was also slicked with nasty. After the plane was tied town I thought about taking a picture of the mess with my phone but decided that I really didn’t want to look at it again.
The plane looked fine, though, just dirty. Propellers are pretty tough, but bird chunks could have damaged other parts of the plane, so it’s best that we landed it as soon as possible to have maintenance look it over. The bird, however… I think it’s safe to say I ruined its day.
So I didn’t fly to Tuscon today, but I might try that again next weekend while my parents are here. Then, after that I will have pretty much learned the curriculum and the bulk of my remaining hours are going to be flying solo, perfecting my skills in preparation for my check-ride.
So, if I went bird hunting this morning (and scored a kill), does that make this Pug a bird dog?
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Hi honey; We obviously need to have a family meeting regarding these flight lessons, sigh.
Eek! Poor birdie. I assume that this is the sort of unfortunate incident that just happens sometimes, a la roadkill?
I’m trying not to picture the plane covered in “what was formerly a bird”…
*chuckles* Yes, yes it does make this Pug a bird dog. Just try not to make a habit of it; I don’t think you get awarded points for hitting them.
Birds are indeed a very serious hazard to aircraft, the way deer are a serious hazard to cars. I understand that some airfields that can afford it use trained falcons to intimidate all the other birds away, among other countermeasures. Perhaps you should ask out of curiosity if your airport does anything to control the local bird population. Not that it would change anything, but it might be good to know about. That and if you do hit one again, try not to let it impact directly on the windshield.
Tempest: This airport doesn’t have any bird countermeasures, and I do know all about the hazard our avian friends pose to aircraft. I haven’t seen any airports in this area listed as having bird control, just warnings about raptor activity at the end of one runway or another.
It was such a train-wreck scenario, the seconds before the prop dusted that bird: The plane was moving fast enough that the nose-wheel was no longer effective at turning the plane, but not fast enough for the rudder to be able to pick up the control slack. On top of that, aircraft don’t swerve well. If I had tried to swerve I might as well have driven off the runway, so I had to just stay put and watch the drama.
Jones, too: I don’t see the problem.
Sounds like stew!!
Huh. Well, as we all know, that’s just an occupational hazard of airplanes. I suspected as much with regard to your steering based on the fact you were taking off; from my experience in airplanes such as commercial airliners, takeoff hardly seems like the time to abruptly swerve the plane about.
Wikipedia has quite the picture of the effects of a bird hitting an airplane under “bird strike.” It’s a shot of an F-16 canopy that had a bird directly impact on it during flight. It’s pretty graphic, so for those who look, don’t be squeamish. I think it more than makes up for the fact that you didn’t take a picture, Pug, to be honest.
Is it wrong that story makes me hungry for chicken nuggets?
That’s just a little disturbing, Crunch.
Boys are so gross.
At least the plane didn’t explode. The movies make it seem like eating a bird means death.
Elf - Eating a bird through a turbine engine generally means the engine fails, sometimes with a very small hemorrhaging of parts (which can rarely take out adjacent engines), but I don’t fly turbine-powered aircraft. No jets for me.
We’re not gross. We’re cool
Well, if you ate, say, a 12 pound goose at 120 MPH with high altitude, that might cause problems, but Pug isn’t in Canada, so it’s less of an issue.
And we’re not gross; we simply have excellent gallows humor.
Besides, E’s the one who commented it sounded like stew.
[...] Quick flight story: My last post was about a failed cross-country flight to Ryan Airpark outside of Tuscon, AZ. Well, my Dad and I went up (with my instructor) to try it again… and failed again! A thunderstorm turned the wrong way compared to its forecast: it headed north and got between us and Tuscon. I wasn’t even that thrilled with flying south (since it looked pretty nasty), but my instructor had me go as far as Casa Grande before diverting to Coolidge. It wasn’t a pretty flight, but it was air time, I had a textbook landing and never got very close to the nasty clouds. Also, my dead reckoning skills checked out for the four checkpoints on my flight plan we passed (e.g., we arrived within 60 seconds of the time I predicted)…. But still, I need to get that cross country done! [...]