Engine fails, pilot lands in field

[Boris Badenov]

Anyways, I knew a guy that was in the Navy and told me about a student pilot in a T-34, on his second flight. The student had a birdstrike through the windshield and it knocked him out cold and he slumped on the stick. The instructor, in the back, couldn't overpower him, and parachuted out. Apparently the student came to, realized what was going on, and made it back without incident.

Heh. Back in my 210 trash-hauling days, one of our guys (and an occasional contributor to jetcareers, I think) had a bird come through the window on his recurrent checkride directly in to the face of the chief pilot. The CP went to the hospital and was ok. He passed the checkride, and the CP eventually went to work for the FAA, where presumably the birds don't attack out of fear of losing their ticket.

We had another guy hauling ass in to CPS and (luckily) eating lunch. A hawk came through the front windshield, zoomed over his head (he was bent down eating an eggroll on the deck next to his seat), out the back window, and wrap itself around the tail. I guess he didn't finish his lunch because it was still on the deck when we all checked out the carnage. I heard he quit the next day. If you ever see 2145U on the ramp, go check out the "kill decal".

If I ever buy a bug-smasher, I'm putting some of those animal-whistles you can buy at WalMart on the cowling. Can't be too careful!

 

[HeyEng]

Talking about fuel...

Last week I was out at the airport farting around when a -172 came in to get gas. LONG story short, it was at another airport getting painted and sat outside for about 6 months. That field doesn't have gas, so they made the 15 minute flight up to get gas (they left the original field with "about 5 gallons or so" as they said). After refueling the plane, it wouldn't start. After killing the battery and hand-propping it about 100 times, they started to pull the cowling off. They borrowed some of my tools and got a soda bottle to sump the tanks and engine. They filled up that 20 oz bottle 7 TIMES with nothing but WATER!!! Obviously, the fuel here is good and water free, so it had to have been left in the tanks. After sumping out all the water, the plane finally started (freakin' amazing, huh?). They claimed that they sumped it before leaving and there was no water, but I'm not sure if I buy that. I seriously can't believe they made it as far as they did with that little fuel and that much water!!!