Bird strike
 

Yesterday I took my other half up, my first passenger since getting my PPL in one of the clubs Robin hr200's.

All went perfectly well, however after landing a pigeon flew straight across the runway :eek:. I broke pretty hard as we were still moving pretty fast, making both my breaks and my o/h squeal a little, which I guess is a fairly ordinary reaction and we missed it by a tiny margin.

Exactly how much damage could that have done (to the aircraft, I can imagine there wouldn't be much pigeon left) had I have blended it with the prop? The guys in the club didn't seem overly concerned and joked that they would have given me the bucket and a sponge. But surely it could cause substantial damage?

Just wondered.

Many moons ago at Sywell, I saw an HR200/100 taxi back with a pigeon speared on the pitot tube.

Those little buggers can cause quite a lot of damage even to a propellor.

http://www.catersnews.com/wp-content...03-800x498.jpg

I've had two: one at night that put a hairline crack on the inside of the windshield bend on a C-150.

The other was a Swanson's hawk when I was landing a glider. Mounting it damaged my wallet to the tune of $900;)

A buzzard down the intake of a CFM 56, bill was in the hundreds of thousands, made a pheasant smoothie with a helicopter recently, no damage.

If you were on the ground and braking then I doubt a pigeon would do much harm.

SND

A tiny sparrow was decapitated by my prop. The head bloodied the windscreen, but the body managed to crack the fibreglass leading edge of the cowling before entering same and ending up cooking at rear on firewall. Tiny bird - but still damage!

With the increase of buzzards all over UK, I'm quite concerned as they seem to have no fear and don't dive the way other birds do.

I broke pretty hard as we were still moving pretty fast....

You broke the aircraft. Maybe if you braked normally.

That aside, in your situation, just continue to control the aircraft. Heavy braking is only going to wear the tyres and if one side locks it's even worse. As you said, they did squeal. At post touchdown speed there is unlikely to be any damage.

I broke pretty hard as we were still moving pretty fast....

You broke the aircraft. Maybe if you braked normally.

That aside, in your situation, just continue to control the aircraft. Heavy braking is only going to wear the tyres and if one side locks it's even worse. As you said, they did squeal. At post touchdown speeds there is unlikely to be any damage. Make sure you tell an instructor to check the airframe and tyres.

Biggest thing I ever hit was a pheasant on landing. Leading edge dented. Chippy.

A close one.
Some years back, we just missed a pelican at a tad under 10,000ft over western NSW.
We needed a calming libation at the club after we'd landed.

Respectfully suggest that "breaking" hard to avoid a pigeon is not the wisest thing to do. You need to keep control of your aeroplane and it isn't worth risking "breaking" an aeroplane or its pax for a bird, is it?

Curly tips, the Buzzard threat definitely is increasing.


Redhill Aerodrome pilots had 'lucky' escape after buzzard smashed into cockpit at 1,400 feet | Surrey Mirror

As said, a small bird at below flying speed will rarely do any serious damage, if it hits on landing then do a good inspection to check it did not enter an intake or cuase any damage, on take off then a precautionary circuit to land before carrying out a similar inspection unless of course you can see where it hit anyway, certainly do not try excessive manouvres or braking to avoid or you could make the situation even worse! I have had a few bird strikes in my time, my first was in a Swedish airforce equivalent to a Jet Provost, this hit right on the windscreen at cruise speed, caused a lot of mess bit no real damage, my latest was believed to be a Swan through an A330 engine on TO - that was a totally different story!:eek:

Being hit by a Bird can do a lot of damage. Especially if she's sat in a Biplane when she hits you:

http://i1053.photobucket.com/albums/...sgxozrya0.jpeg

:p :{

Typical taildragger accident due to zero forward visibility.
Eventually the industry learned from its mistrakes and started putting the little wheel at the front but there are still a lot of dinosaurs about.

Hit an eagle once in a C 172 while in cruise flight. Leading edeg of the wing was squashed right back to the front spar. $ 3000 repair bill :uhoh: