reject for dog on runway

[windtalker]

Hi all,

had a reject today , Aircraft ATR 72-500, speed 90 KIAS, reason dog on centerline.

Is it worth rejecting or is it safe ?,( I took the safer route , both lived ) :)

we had to delay departure after maint. took a good look at the brakes and tires.

any one has similar experience ?

i have heard of buffalows intruding some years ago, Now that would really damage a nice aircraft .

:ok:

[Milt]

Dead Dog on Runway

"Taegu Dropkick Blue 1 at 5 miles, joining initial with 4."

"Dropkick Blue 1 Taegu orbit your present position, we have a dead dog on the runway".

"Dropkick Blue 1 orbiting, section loose line astern go"..

4 pilots now pondering where else can we go, what with a wheels up aircaft yet to be cleared from the PSP runway. But a funny name for a gutzer. Fuel state?

Other sections now being told to orbit.

"Taegu, Dropkick Blue 1, we have 20 minutes, would you advise diversion."

"Dropkick Blue 1, Taegu, now clear to join initial with 4. You will be number 1 on the pitch, sorry for the hold, dead dog being picked up now.
Stupid thing was terminated by a landing aircraft. Advise 1 mile out."

"Dropkick Blue section reform echelon right go."

Anyone recall the US slang for a gutzer.

[Old Smokey]

I had a kangaroo strike on takeoff in an F27 a few decades ago, luckiest kangaroo on earth, the passengers swear that he passed THROUGH the prop disk and was bowled over by the undercarriage. Was last seen hopping off in a wobbly way into the bush.

Examination of the gear / gear strut did reveal a lot of fur and blood, but not a thing to be seen on the prop.

Canuckbirdstrike, you could open a whole new chapter of research on this (keep up the good work with the ornithological strikes).

Regards,

Smokey

[enicalyth]

Advise prop rpm please for kangaroo to pass through prop disk.

[the wizard of auz]

I got all excited for nought. seems my dyklestica got me again. I thought it said "Dog for reject on runway" and thought it might have been someone I knew. :} :E

[twenty eight]

aircraft v zebra

I found this link (http://www.save-the-elephants.org/Photo%20Gallery/AOT%20Crash/Page.html) on another forum.

Caution don't look if you squeamish:yuk:

[davethelimey]

Yuck.

Pretty funny comment on the site though: "No-one was injured".

I'm not a doctor, but the zebra doesn't look too healthy.

[Astra driver]

I was approaching to land at San Luis Obispo, CA. a few years back when the tower transmitted the following..

"Westwind 1124F, slow to minimum approach speed and be prepared for a go-around, we have reports of a stray dog on the runway."

A short while later I was told,

"Westwind 1124F, security has told us they have chased the dog off the runway. You are now cleared to land, caution wake turbulence, departing canine."
:D

By the way, what\'s a "Gutzer"?

[Milt]

Gutzer or Gutser

A landing without the gear being down.

On its guts. A common military term.

Some temporary pilots have done a gutser because the noise of the U/C warning horn prevented the pilot from hearing go-rounds from ATC.

[Mirkin About]

Rejected a takeoff at Tindal many years ago due to family of Dingoes on the runway , firetruck dispatched to remove Dingoes , second takeoff rejected due to several large kites on runway ............................drinking the water sprayed to get rid of the dingoes .


Bugger

[seat 0A]

Last year I hit something on T/O from Istanbul. (737-800)
We were doing about 110 kts, when I saw something, which I thought was a cat, running into the landinglight beam from the left. We were getting close to V1, continued the t/o.
Once airborne, I did my best to inform the TWR that we might have hit a cat during our T/O roll and that they should check the runway. After some initial language problems they said they would.
Later on during the flight we were informed by Sofia CTRL that IST had found a dead dog on the runway.
Turned out we had hit it with the left main LDG Gear. Not much damage at all, luckily. Wrote it up as a dog strike in the ASR .

[sideshowbob]

Deafened a dog in antalaya one night, passed down the left hand side during takeoff shortly after v1 in a 757!

[Trader]

Clipped a dear about 15 years ago on takeoff in a C150. The lucky thing is I was doing a soft field takeoff so I had the nose up and the plane in the air a little earlier than during a regular takeoff.

The strike ripped the right gear back in to the fuselage. We flew to our home field and landed with the gear still embeddd in the fuselage. Needless to say it was a rough landing:sad:

[Milt]

I can feel it coming!!

Someone must have had to deal with an elephant.

Back of the black stump, we in Oz often have to clear the strip of sheep and cattle and the occasional buffalo. Snakes don't count although a female pilot of a commuter float plane in transit Palm Beach to Rose Bay, Sydney once found one entwined around the rudder bar. I know - how did it get on to a floater?

[My names Turkish]

Not an elephant but I have some photos of a Cessna 206 Vs. Giraffe if anyone would care to host them?

[DoctorA300]

According popular myth, I am not sure this one is true, SAS had a donkey strike on a DC10 in Karachi some time ago. It apperently hit the center gear but not the Nose gear
Doc

[LEM]

I aborted a takeoff in Kikondja, Zaire, because of a man down the runway: being used to all sorts of living forms on our airstrips, I started to roll, sure he would have pulled off to one side easily.

But instead of doing so, he started to run on the middle of the runway, like in some movies (!), running and watching behind him the airplane - an Islander - closing in.
He thought he could run faster than the airplane!!!

Just before hitting the ***, I aborted.

We had to shut down, hung to the tail to raise the nose and be able to turn 180° on the naaaaarrow strip, start the engines, roll again uphill, shut down, do the same trick, start again and then takeoff, at last!

Another era...
:{

[greg99]

Legend has it that there's a warthog that hangs out at the airstrip at Phinda game reserve in Kwa Zulu Natal.

Apparently the rangers named it Dunlop after it managed to survive being rolled over by one.

Greg

[Canuckbirdstrike]

Sorry I haven't posted on this topic until now I got tied up with work!

Rejecting the take-off at any time for other than a clear and simple obvious serious problem is a tough decision that we pilots may be faced with. For encounters with mammals we have not been provided with a great deal of information on the issue - because there isn't any. With so many mammal types with different behaviours and no requirement to test and/or certify aircraft for a mammal data there is a complete absence of data on what might happen and what we should do.

As far as mammal strikes go, while not as common as bird strikes they do occur and interestingly from the available data cause more damage. The issue though is available data - no jurisdiction that I have found in my research compels pilots to file a bird/mammal strike report. Hence we get only roughly 20% of the data. Many airlines and airports collect the data, but are reluctant to share the data with regulators out of concern over potential liability.

In North America the most commonly struck mammal is the Deer. The consequences of these deer strikes are severe including complete hull loss and death or severe injury of the flight crew. With the recent exploding deer populations in North America the data from incurance companies is revealing that there is rarely a day goes by that an aircraft is not damaged by a deer encounter.

Good story about the pig. Recently a crew landed at a Canadian airport and just as they were leaving the runway saw a 150+lb pig. Quite a saga to track it down, but it has been suggested that a Pigs On Runway Kill (PORK) program would solve the problem. There has also been great speculation on what the smeel would have been like if part of the beast was ingested in the engine - bacon?

A final point concerns small bird strikes - starlings. Be aware that these are birds that travel in very large flocks and carry out pre-roosting flights. If you run into one of these flocks you can be in big trouble. Starlings are very dense (large mass/small size - not stupid) and they will hit multiple engines. It should be noted that the worst bird strike accident was in 1960 whyne a Lockheed Electra turboprop struck a flcok of stralings. One engine was shutdown and the remaining engines lost power the aircraft crashed with the loss of 62 lives.

Richard

[Capt Claret]

Canuck

The Australian AIP (http://www.airservicesaustralia.com/pilotcentre/aip/index.asp) , at ENR 1.12 Air Traffic Incidents, 3.2.1 (o) (http://www.airservicesaustralia.com/pilotcentre/aip/aip/enr/114110.pdf) , lists "a collision with an animal, including a bird" as a RRM (Routinely Reportable Matter).

RRM require a written report to the ATSB (http://atsb.gov.au) (Australian Transport Safety Bureau) within 72 hours.

[DerekWarrior1]

Canuck, do these deer explode upon impact or is it a spontaneous phenomenum? BTW, you can always tell when a pig has gone through the engine by the crackling sound.

Del

[Canuckbirdstrike]

Capt. Claret:

Thanks for updating me on the requirements in Australia. I obviously missed this information. my only defence is that I did the book research on this issue in late 1999 and either missed it - easily done, or the rules have changed. This shows a very positive attitude to safety issues. I wish other jurisdictions would see it the same way.

Now I do understand from some contacts in Oz that you have had some interesting incidents with kangaroos and airplanes...

DerekWarriorI:

Good one - perhaps the National Enquirer will do a story on spontaneously exploding deer. The issue is the large deer population increases over the last 10 - 15 years - lots of food few if any natural predators and a public that doesn't like people to "shoot Bambi" either directly or indirectly restricting the ability to increase hunting season length and kill limits.

Stangely enough what may help us is the fact that the automobile insurance companies are complaining abiut all the damage being caused to cars by deer and they seem to have a powerful lobby.

Now if we could make them spontaneously explode.....

[DerekWarrior1]

Canuck, The pig joke may have gone over your head, I didn't realise you were not a Brit. In the UK crackling is what we call the lovely crunchy skin on roast pork. Bloody tasty but also very bad for you! Don't ask me about dripping, I'll really be showing my age!

Del (who, remarkably, has lasted 'till 58 without a heart attack)

[Canuckbirdstrike]

Del:

I absolutely got the crackling joke - I am a Brit by birth (a cockney), but left at a very young age for the Great White North. I was raised by a Brit & a Scot and still remember the fights over the crackling at the Sunday dinner table. To add to this I am married to an Essex girl named Sharon - I know the story with that one. So I am still steeped in Brit traditions.

If you made it to 58 then perhaps there is hope for me yet!

Richard

[ABO944]

Quote:

"I was raised by a Brit and a Scott" ........

----------------------------------------------------

Britt's are Scotts are they not??

I once hit a bee on take-off, but that's not really very interesting and rather embarrasing compared to the huge mamals you lot have slaughtered!

P.s ..... dont you hate it when the crackling still has the hair on it?

[Captain Stable]

OK - the pedant in me fought a battle with the me who says "Loser! Get a life!" and won...:hmm:

English are Brits. Welsh are Brits. Scots are Brits. Irish ain't (even Northern Irish). :8 :}

For the sake of the terminally confused and the former colonials who visit these pages, England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland are all countries in their own right. They form part of the British Isles. Great Britain is England, Scotland and Wales. The Isle of Wight does not form part of the island of Britian but is part of Great Britain. The United Kingdom (which is the name of the political entity) includes Northern Ireland with the aforementioned three countries. The Isle of Man I have no idea about (and nor do most Manxmen :oh: ). The Republic of Ireland is part of the British Isles but is a sovereign state in its own right. The Channel Islands are a Crown Dominion, and do not form part of either the UK or, indeed, the EU. since historically they only became subject to the English Crown when Duke William of Normandy ("The Conqueror") became King of England in 1066. Historically they are part of Normandy and got forgotten about (and a Good Thing too).

The things you learn about on TechLog... :eek: :cool:

[Techman]

You are obviously just trying to confuse us.

Why is it England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland when it comes to football, but United Kingdom and Northern Ireland when it comes to Athletics, and the Olympics I believe?

You are obviously just trying to improve the odds through deception;)

And just to stay on topic, I've hit a badger upon landing and had a dog refusing to clear the taxiway eventhough we flashed all available lights at it at, and even opened a window to shake an angry fist at it.

[Crowsnest]

Sorry to depart from the Sunday Lunch/Ethnic banter theme.

Had to goaround on short final in a 152 due to a deer on the runway.Was about to land as due to width of runway (ex-mil) and bobbing white tail had dismissed atco report and assumed it was a bunny. Would've made a mess of the spamcan.

If you look on the Africa forum you'll find a story about a 73 which had an undignified exit due to canine powerplant intervention. A sobering vision when spotted on the approach from the flightdeck.

[DerekWarrior1]

Captain Stable, Congratulations on your excellent summarisation of the geo-political situation concerning Britain's off -shore dependencies. I am from Jersey and you're spot on.

Del

[Lancelot de boyles]

Back when I was still learning to fly, sitting ready for departure at EGHH. Was watching various livestock running around taxi and runway, including a fox which was chasing a rabbit!

More recently. Was talking with a skipper on turnaround in a 737 at a remote north african airfield. There was a dead dog (looked like he might have been a big bugger once) on the runway. A succession of landing aircraft were slowing pounding the remains into the runway. It still caused a bump on the takeoff roll.
The skipper mentioned something about being carefull about the camels, which had a tendency to cross the runway unexpectedly.

Aswan. every time I went in there, there were dogs on the taxi way, lazing around.

[Captain Stable]

Yes, back on topic - I've had a fox strike in an EMB110 many years ago. I was a raw F/O, and the stupid animal was right on the centreline (unusually, so was I!) of the runway I was attempting to depart. I tried to lift the nosewheel over it. My skipper (who hadn't seen it since he was scanning the instruments) thought I had gone bananas and was trying to rotate early. There was a (slight) thump and we reported it on the climbout. ATC said nothing was found later, but we all knew the caterers served it up to us disguised as chicken sandwiches on the next duty.

[Canuckbirdstrike]

captain Stable;

Thanks for educating the colonial peasant on the subtleties of British geopolitics. I will add though that my mother considered herself a "Scot" and not british and I always refer to her heritage in that manner, even though she passed away a few years ago.

Now if you can only explain the mysteries of Lucas auto electrics and why you serve beer warm then I really would have a well rounded education.

Now the most bizarre bird strike I had was over 10 years ago landing a DC-8 in Prestwick, during the flare a pair of Skylarks flew down the inlet for the left air conditioning pack - a small 4 x 6 inch opening. The net result was dispacthing with one pack inoperative to LHR. The captain accused me of deliberately hitting the birds!

Richard

[Milt]

Flock of Birds

From memoirs - Tropical flight testing of a revised ECS system in a Canberra B20.

Birds caused me some problems at Butterworth. I wanted to test the ECS at low altitude and high speed. Whilst at about 400 kts at 200 ft over the sea off the island of Penang, I noticed a little black spot grow rapidly in size directly along the aircraft flight path. I only had time to pull a little elevator before the bird impacted with a huge thump on the aircraft's nose. I pulled up losing speed trying to assess damage. At the speed even a small bird could do considerable damage and this one had been fairly large. We returned immediately to land at Butterworth.

Fortunately, the bird had impacted along one edge of the forward bomb aimer's window. This was armoured glass and had taken most of the shock. A deep gouge had been made in the perspex surrounding the glass window. We were lucky.

A few days later I had the test Canberra fuel load at maximum when I started a take-off at dusk from the 8,000 ft runway at Butterworth. As we accelerated towards lift-off, I saw a very dense flock of small birds rise up off the runway some 600 feet away. Appearing like a small black cloud the birds flew upwards and I thought that I would probably miss most of them if I held down, on or close to, the runway. But the black cloud, disturbed by my approach, apparently decided to try to go back to ground.

I had now lifted off and had a split second to decide whether to put the wheels back on the runway and abort the take off. But there was hardly enough runway left in which to stop the heavy aircraft. Were I to fly through the birds, I would likely lose both engines. What a predicament! Instinctively, I pulled back hard on the controls in an attempt to rise above the main concentration of birds. The aircraft shuddered, at the low speed, as I felt for the limits of the lift from the wings. This occurs just before wing stall which was to be avoided at all costs.

The navigator, behind me, was unable to see forward so I advised him and the tower by calling out,"Avoiding birds" as I tried to also turn a little to the right. The black cloud rapidly became a multitude of dots as I squashed into the outer fringes. There was a staccato of little bangs and the left engine wound down a few RPM before recovering. We had made it. I pulled a substantial reduction in power on both engines in case there was damage, left the undercarriage down and flew a tight circuit to return to the runway as soon as possible. On the landing run, I could see dead and injured birds scattered on the runway.

There was evidence of birds having hit the engine compressor guide vanes and many birds and pieces were pulled from the undercarriage and wheel wells. We had not been fast enough for the small birds to have damaged the aircraft skin. The fire crew picked up 58 birds from the runway.

Inspection and ground running of engines did not point to any damage so we launched again the next evening after a vehicle had flushed out any birds from, and adjacent to, the runway. The flight was to have been for about 4 hours at maximum altitude to permit aircraft temperatures to stabilise. After 3 hours, we were too cold to continue and I returned to lower altitudes and warmer air.

The trials had shown the inadequacy of the revised Environmental Control System (ECS) system so it was now up to the engineers to try again.

[DerekWarrior1]

Canuck,
The warm beer to which you allude is called 'real ale'. It's quoffed by folks with beards and sandals and large stomachs (and that's just the women). To be considered drinkable the beer must contain bits of twig and dead rat. The real ale enthusiasts go round in groups and use words like, "Methinks" and "Landlord." They also enjoy traditional pastimes such as skittles, morris dancing and playing conkers and tiddlewinks. And they love crackling and dripping.

Del

[Lancelot de boyles]

Canuck
I suspect there are no explanations concerning auto electrics, Lucas or otherwise.
Leads one to suspect these were designed by 'folks' with beards, sandals and large stomachs sometime on a friday afternoon, after quoffing a few of the local real ale/ dead rat and twig soup.

[Crowsnest]

Did noone want to hear the rest of Milt's story then?

[Ignition Override]

A Shorts 360 hit a deer on a dark runway (hypnotized by landing lights) in Eldorado, AR (ELD), in '83 or '84. The mechanics drove down from the base in Camden. They then hauled the dead animal back.

Runway kill, not 'road kill'.:}

[RUDAS]

i once hit a fly on takeoff...:}

[Tempsford]

20+ years ago, when the Company I work for started to operate the B757 we had a number of manufacturers reps with us. As the B757 was relatively new in service, we were in effect learning about the B757 together. However, in some cases a rep could be a little over officious.
We sometimes had bird ingestion into the engines and to establish the damage to engine relative to the size fo the bird, this particular rep wanted any remaining debris of the bird so that he could get the debris annalysed (type, weight etc).
On one particular day a bird had gone down an engine, but had missed the core, so the Engineer had just cleaned off the debris and thrown the debris away. The Rep asked for the debris to be told that it was no longer available. He became quite indignant and one of my colleagues decided that he had had enough of this rep. My colleague said "it's ok, I know what sort of bird it was". The rep said "great, what was it?". To which my colleague said "it was a Condor". Somewhat taken aback the rep said "that's unusal ( we were at LGW!), are you sure?" My colleague replied "Oh yes, I found the body on the runway, it had a pipe in it's mouth". At this point a very dejected rep left the office.
I was detached to MBJ on one ocassion to change some Fan Blades on a B757 Engine due to a bird strike ex BGR. The same rep was on the phone to me asking for any debris. He was very pleased when I told him that not only did I have what was left of the bird that had gone down the engine, but I also had all of his mate that had hitched a ride down from BGR wrapped round the RH MLG.

Temps.

[akerosid]

I heard of a procedure for a dog on the runway - the captain is supposed to make a Full Intensity Deceleration Order (FIDO). ;) :p

[madtrap]

O.K. I can’t stand it anymore without dusting this one off.

In the spring of 1970 a Grumman Albatross from 442 (Transport and Rescue) Squadron was enroute back to home plate at CFB Comox on Vancouver Island from a search in the Terrace area (check your atlas for the British Columbia coast).

For reasons best known to himself, the Skipper (Captain Danger, but not to his face) decided that it would be a great idea to do a touch-and-go at Port Hardy, just to break up the evening flight. With dusk but a memory, we attempted to execute said touch-and-go (‘roller’ to you real ale types), but turned it into a stop when we executed a trespassing deer instead, and realized from the visual and sound cues that it had impacted something on the port side. Vancouver Island deer are a small sub-species and there was no chance it would have hit the engine on the high-winged Albert, but risk management (the current buzz-phrase for CDF) made stopping sound judgment with adequate runway left (unlike the heavy Canberra with rapidly diminishing options).

With the amphibious beast halted on the runway, and local traffic, if any, advised of our status on the aerodrome, the Skipper dispatched the Flight Engineer to investigate the event. When Marty went out the main door, he was carrying a green plastic garbage bag as well as his flashlight. (?? I was new and learning not to question local practice).

After what seemed a long time for a damage recce, and the Captain’s increasingly strident rhetorical queries as to the greasie’s whereabouts, Marty climbed back aboard carrying the plastic bag, from which protruded a pair of hooves. He got back on intercom and the Skipper asked if there was any damage. Marty announced that the forward area of the deer was a write-off, but that the hindquarters were just fine, thanks!

“I meant the f___ng airplane you a--h--e!”, said the boss in a fine demonstration of leadership in action.

“Oh! No sweat sir. The left main tire (tyre) caught him in the shoulder; not a mark on the hull, and the brake lines are OK.”
(more muttered invective from the left seat as we got the operation back on the rails to head home) Memories.
I’ve had lots of close calls with more deer and a few canine species over the years, but no more mayhem.

A critter strike should be something you’ve thought about if you operate in places where such events are possible. I wouldn’t stop a jet from a speed beyond 100 knots unless I was convinced that it had hit an engine and done serious damage. For a big jet, with nacelles way up high, that probably means I’m going flying, barring a very low-probability bank shot off the nose gear. With a 737 or equivalent intake height, the species matters: fox OK, deer bad. I shudder to think that a moose might get involved one day, but it's very possible with the Bambi huggers impeding the pre-emptive application of natural selection principles.

The coyotes are growing bigger these days too, methinks, but I do like real ale. Rat and twig bits? ;o)

regards
madtrap

[Tempsford]

This thread is getting better and better!

Temps

[redsnail]

Lucas is known as the Prince of Darkness. :}

[Milt]

madtrap

How was the venison from the hindquarters?
Presume you laced it with liquid smoke.

Thought an experienced deer hunter was coming close to asking me to go and buy a can of striped paint when he said you must have a bottle of liquid smoke on hand when cooking venison!!

[madtrap]

Milt

Marty never sprung for any of the critter. You’d be lucky to get 40# of meat off of what he collected out there that night. He did sling beer at our local watering hole though (we didn’t pay technicians that well).

The young officers were allowed to frequent such establishments while doing Squadron Duty Officer, just for the SAR call-out function; not the Station Orderly Officer. The one golden rule was that you had to be sober enough to initiate a call-out if stuff started to happen.

I was sitting there one night chatting up the lassies of the local education community (‘toolscreachers’ in the vernacular of the time), and as Marty plopped two more draft in front of me, he advised me that ‘Vancouver Rescue’ wanted to talk to me. I had left the “Elks” phone number with the Station operator, this being eons before the advent of cellular telephones.

The duty wonk at the Centre told me that a light private airplane had turned up missing, that the Comms search was nearing completion with nil results and that I should call the standby crew to the hanger for probable launch.

I essentially started a search from the local hotel pub before heading back to Ops to brief the crew.
It just isn’t that laid back anymore I don’t think.

Ciao
Madtrap

PS. I just marinate venison, elk or young moose in red wine and a lot of fresh herbs laced with garlic. Liquid smoke sounds like something that will eventually be found to be an environmental hazard ;o)

[OverRun]

Kangaroos can be a real nuisance, and they are big enough to do a lot of damage if you hit them at speed.

The problem is worse in the dry season because an airport is one of the few places in rural areas where there is still some grass, and hungry kangaroos try to make the most of it. In Oz, airport operators are required to minimise the risk of planes hitting kangaroos or other animals. The responsibility is still on pilots to make sure there are no kangaroos on the strip before they land, but at night-time that is pretty hard to do. So an airport has to shoot problem kangaroos, and patrol the runway before regular services land and take off.

I was inspecting Meekatharra Airport one year (in Western Australia). The grass at the terminal was lovingly watered by the groundsman and it was the only green patch for hundreds of kilometres. It was especially dry that year, and the kangaroos were coming from all over to eat the airport grass. A couple of aircraft hit kangaroos, and the previous night, an RFDS plane had belted one and suffered quite a bit of damage. So I was elected to go roo-shooting that night. It might have been better not to have whiled away the first part of the evening in the pub beforehand, but that is being wise after the event.

After the pub, we weaved our way back to the airport in the airport inspector's car, which was fitted with a full length roof rack for carrying survey gear. I sat on the roof rack, with the shotgun, while the inspector drove the car all over the airport trying to find kangaroos. We eventually flushed a couple out, and started to chase them. The car was bouncing up and down like crazy as we drove through the scrub, out across the runway, and into the scrub on the other side. I was hanging onto the roof rack with one hand, and the shotgun with the other as we raced through the night with the only illumination being the car's headlights. Took aim, and let fly with both barrels - missed - reloaded and fired - missed again. Too much movement and probably too much beer. The car was catching up to the kangaroos, and although they jumped faster and faster, we drove faster and faster.

By now the car was literally on the tail of the kangaroos and their tails were hitting the front bumper as they jumped. The airport inspector was yelling at me to shoot again and shoot straighter, I was trying to hold on to the car and reload at the same time, the car was bouncing and down as we roared around and over the runway again, and I only just managed to aim down at the kangaroo which was about a metre in front of me by now, and then I fired. Big blast and crash. I had shot the top of the radiator off the car (blast), the kangaroo got an enormous fright at the noise and stopped so we promptly ran into it with the car and killed it (crash), and of course that smashed the rest of the front of the car.

Thank goodness we hit the kangaroo. It was lot easier to explain front-end repairs to the car due to hitting a kangaroo, then it would have been to explain the repairs because I had shot the front of the car off. Gave the kangaroo carcase to the panel beater as dog-meat, in exchange for filling out the paperwork obligingly . . .

[Lackof747]

The best I´ve done is hitting a large seagull on a 737. The poor bastard used the windshield wiper bolt as a rectal probe, grinning at me and flapping (dead of course) througout the approach. My F/O had to take over and land because of this.
Quite funny afterwards.

[LNAV-VNAV]

Except for the occasional arctic tern wacked and sliced by the big flat paddles of CV580 props coming out of Longyear, Spitsbergen, the only interesting hit I've ever had was a [big] bunny rabbit while night landing at EBBR. The bunny just raced down the centreline to get away from us and for once I was on the centreline. Loud bang under the floorboards and the centreline went dark. Beggar took out our taxi light. What a stinking mess!

More interesting though is the adventure of a friend of mine who had to report a lobster strike. Madtrap will back me up on this. Seems our Tracker jock did one ID pass too many on some poor hard working fishermen while patrolling the East Coast and the annoyed lobsterman threw one up in front of him as he saw the a/c coming back for yet one more low-low pass alongside his fishing boat. For those of you who aren't familiar, Mrs. Grumman builds a solid airplane. A market-size lobster will only make a small dent in the nose cap at 150 kts.

[madtrap]

Just one more then. There were a lot of birds in the maritime environment, and every once in a while you’d whack one while concentrating on not whacking something larger (like a helicopter) or more visible, like a flare from one of the east block vessels. If you were lucky the bird was a tern or gull; pelicans, and albatrosses, were known to hurt people and machines badly.

Satch was sitting in the greenhouse nose of the Argus on one patrol, minding his own business, when a seagull managed to miss the tempered glass center bit and enter through the adjacent Perspex.
The by-this-point-deceased gull’s disintegrating mass struck the toe of Satch’s boot with enough force to break his toe therein. (In the nose seat one’s feet were normally braced in stirrups that reminded women of totally different experiences).

The bird continued to disintegrate, filling the nose compartment with blood, feathers, offal, etc, in an explosive manner, disconnecting the hero’s helmet communications cord and stunning him somewhat. (A similar effect could be achieved with certain beverages, but it took a bit longer).

The kindly old Commander on the Flight Deck of the mighty patrol aircraft, keenly aware that the gull had hit the nose, called on intercom to assure himself that Satch was OK. After trying both the normal and tactical intercom modes with nil response, he grew concerned and directed another crewmember to check on their boy.

The nose compartment was forward of a “water-tight” door, a sliding/locking device designed to fool one into thinking that the airplane could be ditched safely without a water-hammer sluicing all concerned out the mad boom at the other end.

When the other lad whipped this door open, the airflow through the broken Perspex was able to continue into the unpressurized hull at approximately the TAS of the airframe, and the door-opener wore a great deal of the matter that had previously been a seagull. Blood was immediately identified as one of the components of this mess, and the hasty assumption was made that this blood belonged to the human occupant of the compartment. With concern mounting for his welfare, he was unceremoniously unstrapped and dragged from his seat to receive either first aid or the last rites, suffering more bruises at the hands of his colleagues than he had sustained up to that point in the avian assault.

All this to say, if you’re around birds a lot and busy working, and your airplane doesn’t have NESA heated windows to absorb lots of the energy, wear something substantial to protect your eyes and face from pop-up targets. Despite all the fun some of us are having, there’s a self-protection thread running through this string, one that it doesn’t hurt to refresh from time to time.
I learned a lot about flying whilst listening in bars, but ‘Air Clues’ won’t publish any of those stories.

LNAV-VNAV, if your wheels are on the carrier deck, however briefly, when you hit the other airplane, is that a mid-air or a manoeuvering accident?

[LNAV-VNAV]

Hmm… Lemme think about that. You refer to our old buddy who now works for Mrs. Bombardier, teaching young sprogs the finer points of RJ handling. You understand, of course, that I wasn’t part of that event, just an innocent by-stander but therefore a witness.

That’s 35 years ago this month but if memory serves it was a dark and dirty night in mid-Atlantic with a lot of confused deck motion and already a few bolters and wave-offs. This light fleet carrier (CVL), sister-ship to Karel Doorman, Melbourne, Cinqo de Mayo and others, had a lively motion in a seaway. So our friend’s line-up on final is more axial than centered on the angled-deck, the ship pitches and the wires drop away under him as the Grumman S2F [the Stoof] comes across the landing area, momentary touch down too far forward as the full power comes on and he encounters his next obstacle: the forward deck park where previous landers are resting.

I remember the bits of sheet metal flying through the air and live ordonance from the under-wing racks rolling around the deck but our friends kept on flying with a good portion of the right wing missing. As I said in a previous post, Mrs. Grumman builds a solid airplane. Bingo fuel’s long gone though and with some serious controllability issues, he can’t bring it back on board so he ended up ditching at night alongside one Her Majesty’s Cdn destroyers who were gracious enough to turn on some lights for the occasion. The crew got picked up by the lifeboat, brought aboard the destroyer and promptly served a sufficient amount of pusser’s rum to ensure a relaxed state of mind.

So in answer ot your query, Madtrap, I think it was neither a mid-air collision nor a maneuvering accident but a clear case of controlled flight into a [several] ground-based obstacle[s]. So there we were, witnesses to a CFIT event long before the term got coined – although there is some room for debate about the ”controlled” part in this case.

Regards

[DerekWarrior1]

Excuse me!!!!!

But what's all this got to do with real ale or dead dogs?


Del

[speed freek]

Heard this in a pub:

Can't remember the operator but an A340-300 out of Jo'burg had a slight surge in the number 4 engine on the t/o roll. Didn't happen again and all readings were normal so the t/o continued. On the ground at the other end the eng. on his walk around found bits of hair and fur on the number 4 cowling. Turns out a rabbit hit it!!! :confused: bit of a super bunny!