Subject: Re: Humor: a chicken joke (fwd)
Date: Nov 7 06:16:07 1995
From: Don Baccus - donb at Rational.COM



David Bailey:
>The FAA has a device for testing the strength of windshields
>on airplanes. They point this thing at the windshield of the
>aircraft and shoot a dead chicken at about the speed the air-
>craft normally flies at it. If the windshield doesn't break,
>it's likely to survive a real collision with a bird during
>flight.

Interesting, I've heard they test the capacity of turbine fans
on modern engines to ingest gulls, etc which are so common at
airports. I've even heard variants of the frozen/thawed bird
story which far predate the British high-speed train project
(which is only a decade or so old). This has been around awhile.
Urban Legend? Or is there a factual basis? Oregon or Southern
grown chickens?

On the true-story side of the fence, an Israeli F-16 fighter
pilot had the misfortune to head-on a migrating largish raptor
at Mach 1++ many years ago in the Mt. Eliat area, which has
huge concentrations of migrating raptors. Yes, it came
through the windshield and no, he did not survive. The Israeli
airforce responded with the remarkably intellegent tactic of
paying attention to the time of year and not scheduling training
missions at known passage points then.

- Don Baccus, Portland OR <donb at rational.com>