Last weekend I had the privilege of flying with one of the best Navion formation teams in the country, the Frazier Blues. Many of you saw them perform at the ANS National Convention in Caldwell, ID in 2002. The team leader is the former leader of the Canadian Snow Birds and is out of Langley, BC. The other 2 planes flying that day are former members of the Blues. The Frazier Blues have flown 20 air show performances this summer, but this weekend was just for fun at a small local flyin. We did a 3-ship formation takeoff and formed up in a diamond. We flew down the valley and did a couple turns over town and then back to the field with a few smoke passes and a couple more 360 turns. Everything was going as planned as we did the formation break and lined up for downwind to land. I was in the third plane when all of a sudden my pilot says, "number two just took a bird strike!"

We were a little higher than number two when he started a rapid decent. Of course there was a large crowd of people on the ground watching with cameras and handheld radios. My pilot didn't want to sound the alarm if there wasn't a problem. However, as number two continued rapidly losing altitude, he broadcast, "number 2 is going down, 2 is going down." Number 1, who was on short final heard the call and poured on the power to do a go around. About then, we saw the bird fall off and figured number two had taken it in the cowl or maybe the tail. Finally number 2 leveled out, made a short base, extended the gear, rounded out to final and landed, leaving only about 25 feet of runway behind him. That's what spot landing practice will do for your. From our perspective it looked like number 2 was only at tree top level for his base and final.

Once everyone got on the ground and the adrenalin quit squirting out of our ears, we had a chance to assess the damage. It turns out the bird was a full-grown osprey which broke out the windscreen. The impact tore off one of its wings but the body was hung up on what was left of the windscreen. It was blocking the pilot's view and he was literally covered with blood, guts and feathers. His hat and headset had been knocked off and his glasses and head were smeared with blood. We had seen the osprey come off because the pilot had thrown it out. As the copilot (also a Navion owner) said, the pilot was really pissed that that bird had broken his airplane and he said the bird was going back out the way he came in. Fortunately, the copilot had just barely seen the bird coming, turned his head away from the impact and avoided being covered in gore. Realizing the distraction of the pilot who's vision was impaired by the blood, whether it was the pilot's or the bird's could not be determined at that point, and acknowledging the rapid decent, the copilot took over the controls while the pilot got rid of the bird and retrieved his headset so they could communicate again. The pilot regained his composure quickly and realized they were down to 70 mph. He poured in the power and dropped the gear to make the field.

As it turned out all the blood belonged to the bird and the pilot only had a small nick on his thumb probably from the windscreen. Both the pilot and copilot said the impact sounded like a huge firecracker going off in their face. They couldn't communicate other than hollering back and forth without the pilot's headset. Once the pilot had retrieved his headset, he heard us broadcast that they were going down. He tried to transmit that "no they weren't," but because of the huge wind noise in his cockpit, we were unable to hear him.

Debriefing afterwards, both pilots stated they didn't expect the tremendous drag and the rapid deceleration without the windscreen. Other people who have had similar situations report you can open a door to release some of the drag. In this case, however, once on the ground, inspection showed that with the canopy open, the framework around the broken one-piece windscreen was real flimsy. In a situation such as this, I would never recommend opening a canopy and hoping the rollers would hold it on.

All's well that ends well except for the bird. A windscreen is probably easier to replace than a huge dent somewhere in the aluminum. I don't know how you would ever practice a simulated bird strike but it is something to think about. Always remember, "Fly what is left of the airplane." See the accompanying pictures and we have many more if you are interested.

As always ANS, Ltd. is here to serve you, our members and from the comments we got at convention the hard work that was put in by a few individuals is paying off in spades.

Hope to see you in Cedar City, UT at next year's convention, June 28-July 4. Reserve those dates.

May you always have tailwinds and deal with worthy people

Gary