That system is still in use today Andrew. The mournful cries still
ring out over RAF (and probably civvy) airfields even now, especially
before flying on a summer's day.
I can't recall anyone losing their life from a birdstrike through the
canopy, although there have been many near-accidents. I wonder if
your F111 pilots and navs had to contend with larger birds than we do
in the UK.
I do remember flying a Jaguar north over the sea among the Hebridean
islands on a glorious winter's day in 1978: I was at around 250ft
enjoying a glorious day thinking about how good I was and how easy
was this flying business, when this HUGE seagull filled my forward
vision and scared the living daylights out of me! I eased up to
500ft for a good while after that ...
Chris
~~ >-)-
C M I Barker
Cambridgeshire, Great Britain.
+44 (0)7092 251126
www.threeshoes.co.uk
homepage.mac.com/zuiko
On 28 Jan 2006, at 22:07, Andrew Fildes wrote:
> And I worked for another company in the early seventies that made
> bird-scaring systems for airfields - either a Land Rover broadcasting
> distress calls or an horizon device that mimicked the wingbeat of a
> hawk. Very lo-tech.
> A metallurgist friend of mine here was a consultant to the military
> on faults and failures, including catastophic ones. He tells of being
> called in to assess the debris from a low level incident where an
> F-111 had gone straight into a hillside on a low-level run. There
> seemed no obvious cause until someone had the wit to examine the
> pilot's personal effects which were not included with the debris. The
> helmet was mostly full of seagull and plexiglass, rather than pilot.
> Nasty.
> Of course they should test with seagulls, preferably those big, fat,
> Pacific gulls or Herring Gulls rather than the annoying little, chip-
> stealing Silver Gulls that we get around here. But for some odd
> reason, Safeway just won't stock them.
> AndrewF
>
==============================================
List usage info: http://www.zuikoholic.com
List nannies: olympusadmin@xxxxxxxxxx
==============================================
|