My first time

CaliforniaSurfer

CaliforniaSurfer

Well-Known Member
I hit a bird today. I was with a student and we were coming in for landing, about 15 feet or so off the runway and I see this big ass bird coming at me out of the corner of my eye. Whamo! So, we taxi in, shutdown get in his ride and drive down the taxiway and out to the runway (uncontrolled) to check it out. We put it in a plastic bag and took it back to the FBO and put it on the BBQ. Nah, but we looked in an Audobon book, turns out to be a young red-tailed hawk.

I felt bad, just flying along this thing was and sha-lack we tore it's left wing off and broke it's neck. Wish it was a pigeon instead. RIP

Surf
 
I smacked one on climb out doing some pattern work once. It hit the windshield and I was like holy cow! That's kind of scary, you know? You're flying along, and then you hear this "BOOM!"
 
I hit my first one a few weeks ago. We didn't even know we hit it until we had the plane in the hangar that night. I was standing around waiting for the other pilot and I looked up and it was like "Hey, I think we hit a bird." I'd attach a picture of it if I was smart enough to do so.
 
I chopped one up real good a about a year ago. Wasn't much left to be able to look up in the Audobon, though.
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The day I took my commercial checkride, the owner of a brand new C182T came in and had flown through a flock of birds the night before. One bird hit just to the left of a rivet line on the leading edge of the wing, and popped out some rivets leaving a nice size dent and a hole in the wing. He wasn't very excited to have to reskin a wing on an airplane that was about a month and a half old.
 
Wow...were they big birds? The few that I snagged were right after rotation, so they didn't do much damage other than a small dent in a wing root fairing, plus they were small.

When I was working on my private, I was watching a Lake Amphib. land. On real short final, he tagged a goose with the right wing. It put a goose-sized dent and fist-sized hole midway down the leading edge of the wing. It hit, the right wing dipped hard, and he added a bunch of power to make it to the threshold then he just dropped it on. Took over a year, and surely a lot of $$$ to fix.
 
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