I TAXI TO my parking-slot at Ronaldsway; go through the shut-down ritual, slide back the canopy – and then just sit there.
I can see my hands shaking and am suddenly given to tilting my head back and taking in mighty gulps of air. Just beyond the airside fence sits a line of Harley Davidsons with a group of bikers giving me a friendly nod. I do not look at them. God, I am an idiot! What the bloody, bloody hell made me do that…..? Because 18 minutes ago I made a seriously bad decision. All right, the need for the decision came out of a blue sky. A most peaceful blue sky, which is not universally the case on the capricious weather-engine known as the Isle of Man.
But this time it is blue sky. It is TT Week and I am performing twice a day around the island. I fly at Douglas, Castletown, Ramsey – anywhere the bikers are, which is practically everywhere during TT Week. I love TT Week. Perhaps that had a bearing on the decision I took.
The display was at Peel Harbour on the west coast. Peel is a tight little bay when viewed from a Pitts Special cockpit, but is a lovely place with a small, but vigorous fishing fleet. Which is now, I observe the fleet as I approach over the hills, in the process of sailing home. Accompanied, it becomes apparent as I circle the place, by roughly 343-million of the species larus canus.
Seagulls.
This is sheer bad luck. You can’t time a display to avoid a fishing fleet because they just come in when they’re full. And the gulls certainly seem to think this one is full. Like any display pilot who performs regularly
at coastal sites, I have a healthy fear of seagulls. Especially 343-million of them. Well, it’s a straight choice – either bin the display or pitch it a bit higher than usual and carry on. It is 30 seconds to start-time….
I carry on. It is like displaying through 343-million bursts of flack. Miraculously, I do not hit a single bird. Now, back at Ronaldsway, I cannot believeI did that. I must have taken leave of my senses.
I am perfectly well aware that a seagull can weigh half a kilogram upwards. I am perfectly well aware that in an argument with a 550 kg Pitts S1 at 170 knots, the seagull is not going to win. But I am equally well aware that it can most certainly force a draw. It can come in through the windscreen, smash up a wing leading-edge….
Why did I do that….?
Well, it’s called task-fixation. Psychologists have various eight-cylinder words for it, but they all come to the same thing.
You are intent on a task.
If a sudden query comes up, your mindset is to continue with the task and so you tend to tread down the query and carry on. Like a display pilot noting a low top height at the apex of a loop but pulling on round anyway. I’ve long preached – if preach is quite the right word coming from me, which seems kinda unlikely – that much of taskfixation, especially in display flying, can be neutered by thorough personal pre-flight briefing. If this happens then I’m gonna do that, or that….
But…. bird strike? Isn’t that pretty much an Act of God?
Well, maybe. But if you deliberately dive into a flock of 343-million seagulls in order to perform an aerobatic display, it is also the act of a complete bloody idiot. Eventually the bloody idiot clambers out of the cockpit, having told the frightened little man inside me that I’ve learned my lesson and will never, ever do that again. I wander over to look at the Harleys. It is easier to look at Harleys than to think about seagulls and idiots.
In truth I have a sort of love-hate relationship with our feathered friends. On one hand you cannot hate a creature that shares your sky and, in fact, has a stronger prior claim on it than you do. But like a jaywalker who steps out in front of you, you do sometimes wish they’d pay a bit more bloody attention.
Do they not realise that this roaring monster in their midst – even if a Pitts Special or an Extra – is far less manoeuvrable than they are, and that it might be an idea to get out of the bloody way? Well, of course, most of them do – how often have you seen a bird flash past and wondered how many G he pulled to do that? But they don’t always. This is what one Chesley Burnett Sullenberg III discovered when both engines of his Airbus became bird cookers and thus obliged him to place the aeroplane in the Hudson River. (And may I salute you, Sir, as a Captain of Captains). The facts about bird strikes are quite difficult to ascertain, not least because – particularly in GA – most are minor, unless of course you happen to be the bird. Several august airworthiness bodies do study the phenomena, and one of the most serious suggests that maybe 80% of bird strikes go unreported.
Of the estimated total annual 30 000- odd, the ones most likely to cause big accidents are, unsurprisingly, ingestion into jet engines. Two factors increase the impact of a bird strike – Firstly, the weight of the bird, and secondly, the speed of the aircraft.
The second is much the biggest factor, which is no great surprise – or at least, I thought it wasn’t. But I had no idea by how much. It seems that a 7 kg bird striking a canopy at 200 knot produces a 16 tonne impact – which doubles to 32 tonnes if you up the speed to 280 knots. Okay, 7 kg is a pretty serious goose, and most of us don’t charge around at 280 knots – but you get the gist.
So thank you, Extra and Pitts, for sourcing bloody strong canopies, for I’ve had several direct canopy-strikes. Okay, I didn’t weigh the birds, that being a tad impractical – and I can’t imagine they were anything like 7 kg, or I wouldn’t be here – but in the glimpses I got they looked like seagulls out of the Grumman Skunk Works and obliterated all forward vision in blood and guts in the manner of their passing.
Bird strikes obviously happen mostly at low level, where most of the birds are. Having spent more time than most at low level, both crop-spraying and display flying, I have probably had more than my share.
What always astounds me is that you see the bird coming at you in the last possible split-second and whatever you do is going to be wrong.
You have an instant impression he’s heading for the left wing and so you bank right – just at the moment he decides to break upwards. WHAPP…. The other thing that astounds me is that head-on they always seem to go through the prop intact. You would have thought that with three blades rotating at 2 700 rpm one of the scythes would get ‘em – but no, they seem to pass right through that and come straight at the windscreen.
Crop-spraying, I once clearly saw an unfortunate whatever-it-was come in straight through the prop and get instantly- filleted on the knife in front of the windscreen. The remains went unerringly into the air-vent on the cockpit roof and came down on me, starting with a severed wing still flapping on my lap. I ignored it, because at six feet over the crop you do NOT flinch. They call bird strike remains ‘snarge’ in the trade, Lord knows why. But if you’ve had it in your lap, ‘snarge’ is not a bad word for it.
TO AVOID A BIRD STRIKE?
Obviously there are no hard and fast rules. Most strikes – but by no means all – happen below about 1 000 ft. Most are near aerodromes – which, of course, they would be, ‘cos that’s where aircraft are low. There is a bias towards migration times of year and also to early morning when they come out to feed and dusk when they wing home for a Martini. Beyond that – well, it’s just down to good old lookout.
If you have a flock of birds feasting near the runway when you want to depart then don’t be afraid to ask ATC for the fire-truck to scare them off – but bear in mind this may or may not work very well, because they will tend to come back. Take-off as quickly as possible after the fire-truck before they do. But above all is the mindset. If the runway’s long enough, pre-brief yourself that if you have a bird strike – and this is the most likely moment – then you’re going to throw the take-off away. Don’t think – just do it. And once you’re committed, climb at max angle initially. It won’t reduce your exposure, but you’ll be going a bit slower.
Perhaps I should add – rather obviously – that if you’re near the ground, don’t flinch. At our GA end of the spectrum it seems that about 50% of the fatal bird strike accidents arise from birds coming in through the windscreen and having a deleterious effect on the pilot’s head – but of the rest, a goodly portion are loss of control or flying into the ground while trying to evade the bird. Oh…. and lastly, of course, do not deliberately fly at high speed into a bay of airspace you know to be inhabited by 343- million seagulls….
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