wrote:
Ron Natalie wrote:

Jase Vanover wrote:

I posted yesterday about my first solo, and planned to do some more


uneventful circuits today but ended up having a postable experience

once

again.


Congrats...you did the right thing: Fly the plane (you can freak out


later).

I once took a large bird in the wing and it pushed the leading edge

back

to the spar.


Ron
That sounds pretty interesting. Care to elaborate with specifics? I
know a guy in Ecuador who hit a big condor and it too made a dent that
went back to the spar. He landed, checked the damage, then took off
again to fly to home base down on the coast in Guayaquil for repairs.
The kicker was, he landed at Cuenca which is at about 8000msl and took
off again! It was in a Navion. I know the airplane and saw the photos.
Still shake my head at that.
In my many years of flying, I think/know I've hit hundreds of birds of
varying size, make and model. Had several come into the cockpit with
me. I hit the most with helicopters while crop dusting though.

It was very interesting from my perspective. This was the FIRST time
Ron took me flying and I was afraid of flying at the time, but he
tricked me into it (called and asked if I wanted to go look at the
leaves!!). We were flying into Luray, VA and I was just thinking I
wasn't going to die when I noticed "THE BIRD". I thought to myself
"Hey, this is really cool, flying with the bir ..." "****" cries Ron; I
freeze. He came in hot and had to go-around. Before the experience I
"knew" if you went up in a plane and something bad happened you died;
after the experience I "knew" if you went up in a plane and something
happened you had to get Ron's brother John to drive you home. Not a bad
thing.

Margy