It was a turkey buzzard that almost got me tonight.<\/p>\n
I flew down to Georgetown to look at a few aircraft seats I might use for my simulator room being built downstairs. They smell musty, but I think can be cleaned up and refurbished for the sim. New foam and either clean or replace the covering over the frame.<\/p>\n
I had to come back up north, as we have weddings to attend over the next two weeks. \u00a0Leaving Georgetown to return home, I was making a great climb rate of about 1500 fpm. Being alone and light on fuel makes a huge difference.<\/p>\n
Climbing and turning from crosswind to downwind, I encountered a formation of buzzards in my flight path. I was already maneuvering, and there was no action taken on my part due to the lack of reaction time available.<\/p>\n
Two of the birds on the outside of my right wing altered course to their left and gave me some margin. The third guy in executed a sharp climb to a near stall and went over my wing. Don’t know how he made it, but he did.<\/p>\n
That left only one big turkey buzzard, and I knew I had an emergency only microseconds in my future. In that instant I had decided to wait for the impact, experience the severe vibration once the damage occurred, and then lower the nose on a straight course until I had the engine shut down and the damaged prop feathered. \u00a0No way I could miss him – he was lined up with my right engines flight path.<\/p>\n
My attention was on him in this compressed time frame. He was going to die and I was going to be very excited for the next few minutes. Then I witnessed a surprise….. \u00a0the first agile and skilled aviator I have yet encountered in the turkey buzzard communitity.<\/p>\n
In compressed time, I watched his right wing feathers – well – feather. The feathers flared up and dumped the air out from under his wings. Next he twisted his wing and caused an immediate stall. This allowed him to enter a spin to his right – with a steep entry. It saved his life and allowed me to keep using this engine. <\/p>\n
There was nothing I could have done to avoid this. Four large birds, but with me in a climbing turn, there was no time to react. <\/p>\n
It ended well. Looking forward to flying to Florida Monday morning for business, with a few seaplane rides in there too.<\/p>\n
Today was one of those days where I rode the motorcycle to the airport, and got in my own airplane. It is hard to complain after a day that ends like that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was a turkey buzzard that almost got me tonight. I flew down to Georgetown to look at a few aircraft seats I might use for my simulator room being built downstairs. They smell musty, but I think can be cleaned up and refurbished for the sim. New foam and either clean or replace the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home-page"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.airdorrin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.airdorrin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.airdorrin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.airdorrin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.airdorrin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=621"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.airdorrin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":627,"href":"https:\/\/www.airdorrin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621\/revisions\/627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.airdorrin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.airdorrin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.airdorrin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}