Collision with birds? Speculation!

[thefoxx]

My friend had a recent very close call in his RV6 with a collection of geese last night - so it got me thinking what type of damage our Diamonds might suffer with a collision with birds.

Has anyone had the unfortunate experience?

[Rich]

Yup. Summer '03 I hit a seagull (or something similar) with my DA40 at about 130 knots. Halfway out the left wing. Caused separation crack along the seam between upper and lower wing wing shells about a foot long and a bit of deformation of the upper shell. Diamond provided a custom patch for a chunk of the upper skin and it was repaired by Larry Mansberger in Minden, NV. No lingering effects. You still can't tell where the impact was.

The collision happened over North Seattle and the plane was ferried down to Minden with speed tape covering the cracked area.

The encounter produced this reverberating BOOM and pronounced left yaw at impact, but no discernible change in flying characteristics after the impact.

[Chris B]

Yep, in my DA40. Late 2014 on approach to LVK at night. 7pm, 1800 AGL, 110 KTAS. Based on the remains it was probably a crow.

Fortunately it glanced off the lower front cowl, slid past the NACA duct (which collected debris) and impacted the wing root, leaving only cosmetic damage. I think that is the strongest part of the airframe. Blood stretched to the tail skid. What a mess.


As I recall from my suddenly renewed interest in bird strikes, ~30% happen at night when avoidance is obviously impossible. A direct impact by a large bird on our beautifully expansive canopies would likely be quite serious.

If you search DAN for "bird + strike" you will find several interesting threads.

Chris

[CFIDave]

Happened to me at night:
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=5250
Sorry that photos on that thread don't work anymore, so here's one photo of the aftermath:

[Karl]

We have a lot of Eagles here in Langkawi and bird strikes are common on our DA 40 and 42 aircraft. Never had any damage requiring repair beyond paint chips.

We also have a lot of kites (The thing on a string) flying close to the airport and kite strikes are also common. They cause a lot more damage than birds, usually as the nylon line becomes wrapped around prop shafts or is dragged over the leading edge cutting into the composite. We have often wondered what would happen if a small boy had the other end of the line wrapped around his hand.

Kite flying in Malaysia is like a national pastime and they are often flown 2 or 3 thousand feet high.

[Rich]

How much damage one sees is clearly going to be a combination of the weight of the bird, just where and how direct the hit and speed. I took the hit directly in the center of the body of a 3-4 lb. bird at 130 knots right on the leading edge of the wing. And a really impressive acoustic accompaniment.

And just to add an interesting twist, I was ferrying the plane back from getting it repaired. I stopped in The Dalles (KDLS - airport is in Washington, the city of The Dalles is across the river in Oregon). I taxi out for takeoff and behold, walking around right on the runway is a flock of geese Taxied back and chose another runway.