Latest on the DC Medevac copter crash


Investigators aren't ruling anything out as they try to
determine what caused a helicopter to crash into the Potomac
River near the Wilson Bridge.

Ellen Engleman Conners is chairwoman of the National
Transportation Safety Board.

She says operator failure is one possibility, along with
the weather, tall cranes in the area for building the new
bridge, and birds, which could've become tangled in the
chopper's engine. The wreckage is being taken to the NTSB
academy in Ashburn, where investigators will take a closer
look at it.

She also says four frames of a highway video taken on
the Wilson Bridge will be examined at a lab in Washington.
Although the video quality is poor, Conners says it appears
to show the chopper losing altitude.

Authorities are also inspecting five cranes along the
bridge, to determine if they might have been hit by the
chopper. The two tallest cranes will be examined at seven
am Wednesday.

http://www.wusatv9.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=36171


What kind of birds fly at night?

As the copter (all copters) approached this area near National
Airport, they must fly at 200 feet, however the cranes being
used to build the new spans of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge are
300 feet high .... pretty dangerous if you ask me!

KM

wrote:
<snip snip>
> She says operator failure is one possibility, along with
> the weather, tall cranes in the area for building the new
> bridge, and birds, which could've become tangled in the
> chopper's engine. The wreckage is being taken to the NTSB
> academy in Ashburn, where investigators will take a closer
> look at it.
<snip>
> http://www.wusatv9.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=36171
>
>
> What kind of birds fly at night?

Um, you'd probably be surprised. I do quite a bit of night flying as
a helicopter instructor, and I see them once in a while. If we have
the searchlight on (normal for several minutes at a time on an
instrument approach to an airport, also normal when operating close
to the ground) sometimes I'll see one flash by. I usually mention it
to the student in order to encourage him/her to keep their visor down
and protect their eyes.

I don't know exactly what kind of birds, maybe they're bats. I don't
really care what they are though, I hope if and when I eventually hit
one it doesn't hit at me or my crew!

>> What kind of birds fly at night?
>

Owls.....

Scott

I used to be a radar operator on a project to track the number of
birds passing through a wind corridor for migratory research. The radar
had been tweaked to give us horizontal and vertical profiles. Remarkably,
we found birds- and lots of them- traveling at night, even in very cold
weather. I never did find out how they kept their eyes from freezing over.

We tracked them in southern Montana during the migratory season,
well into October or November, maybe even December. Of course, the number
of animals dropped rapidly as the migration wound down.

Someone suggested it might have been a bat. It's too cold this
time of the year; they're all in hibernation in that neck of the woods. (I
used to help count bats, too, being a caver and all.)

The address in the header is bogus. Send no e-mail there.

-AJHicks
Chandler, AZ

"plasticguy" > wrote:

>
>>> What kind of birds fly at night?
>>
>
>Owls.....

Geese...

Carey Gregory wrote:
>
> "plasticguy" > wrote:
>
> >
> >>> What kind of birds fly at night?
> >>
> >
> >Owls.....
>
> Geese...

Speaking of which .... the other day I bought three giant loaves
and bread and went to the cemetery to feed the Geese. There
were a couple of hundred of them and they started walking
toward me (when the saw the bread) and all of a sudden
about 200 Seagulls approached me from behind and the Geese
just turned around and walked away! The Seagulls seemed
to be more aggressive .... and they got the bread.

KM