Wow! This is very dangerous for both the plane and the creature! I still remember a few years ago, my Sting was soaring in Fei Ngo Shan (pilot Master Leung). While it was performing a turn, a giant bird suddenly attacked, it jaws was force-catching Sting's wing. Very unfortunately, Master Leung was making a sudden turn at that time and the wing of Sting hit the wing of the bird or vice versa. You guess what happened then! The bird's wing was obviously broken and the giant bird spirally fell down into the bush. My Sting had a 2 inch gap between the wing tip and the centre panel and was landed safely. Inspection on the wing panel discovered a scratch that was obviously made by the bird's jaws!
The plane survived but the poor bird was not....
Just digged out the information from the old forum
Quote:
Name: Stanley Chan
Topic: An eagle got kill by my sailplane!
日期: 23/9/2001
時間: 1:47:03
Message
This morning I went to test fly my Sting in Fei Ngo Shan and later joined by Master Leung. We flew the Sting in turn to check the behaviour and butterfly landing characteristics of the sailplane. After a few landings with adjustments on setting and ballast, we were happy to fly it on a course to do some speedy turns as in F3F. This time Master Leung was flying, when the sailplane was cruising steady along the ridge, an eagle popped out and approached the sailplane in a parallel course. This is quite common scenery, as oftenly eagle likes to check out the companion in its airspace. At this moment, just a pure coincident really, as Master Leung started to make a quick turn, the eagle attacked the sailplane and something really horrible was happening, we have a collision! A scene just looked like the Chinese flighter jet collided with the US spy plane! So you can imagine the result of this collision, we saw the eagle spirally fell down, as its wing was possibly broken. The Sting continued it course but with some damage, the wing tip panel was loosen but still flyable. We landed the plane immediately and found out that the carbon wing rod connecting the centre panel with the wing tip panel was nearly broken, you can imagine how big the impact force acted on it! As we thought the eagle might be survived after the fall, all of us including two other pilots who saw the accident went down the slope to search for the poor bird. But really sorry, after more than an hour of searches covering the surrounding area, we were unable to find it - it was probably dead in the initial fall. This kind of accident has never happened in my whole soaring experience, I and Master Leung really feel guilty and sorrow about this and hope this accident would never happen again. May the sol of this poor bird rest in peace.