"Traffic, traffic!"

Quite the "fluff piece", with a bit of "don't panic, folks, but..." mixed in there. :rolleyes2:

I doubt that even such a large vulture could attain +30,000 from near sea level... even with a "warm thermal" (as if there were some other kind).

In really mountainous areas, maybe, where "ground level" might be well above 10,000 MSL, but over the lesser hills of Scotland, probably not.

I think motorists should be more wary of this big bird- imagine that thing descending on some roadkill right in front of you as you come around a bend! :eek:
 
rottydaddy said:
Quite the "fluff piece", with a bit of "don't panic, folks, but..." mixed in there. :rolleyes2:

I doubt that even such a large vulture could attain +30,000 from near sea level... even with a "warm thermal" (as if there were some other kind).

In really mountainous areas, maybe, where "ground level" might be well above 10,000 MSL, but over the lesser hills of Scotland, probably not.

I think motorists should be more wary of this big bird- imagine that thing descending on some roadkill right in front of you as you come around a bend! :eek:
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LOL Forget the roadkill, imagine that bird letting loose from FL300 and having that bird hockey rolling through the windshield as you tool down the highway!
:hairraise:
 
I doubt that even such a large vulture could attain +30,000 from near sea level... even with a "warm thermal" (as if there were some other kind).
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruppell's_Vulture

"A Rüppell's Vulture was confirmed to have been ingested by a jet engine of an airplane flying over Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire on November 29, 1973 at an altitude of 11,000 metres (36,100 ft)"
(Abidjan is a coastal city, no mountains nearby.)


Wouldn't it quickly descend out of the "warm thermal" as a frozen block of bird???
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Somehow they do it, the local T here at 30K is M30, not sure what it would be near the equator.
 
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Let'sgoflying! said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruppell's_Vulture

"A Rüppell's Vulture was confirmed to have been ingested by a jet engine of an airplane flying over Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire on November 29, 1973 at an altitude of 11,000 metres (36,100 ft)"
(Abidjan is a coastal city, no mountains nearby.)




Somehow they do it, the local T here at 30K is M30, not sure what it would be near the equator.
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That's amazing... first, that they can get up there after self-launching from flatlands, and second, that they stay up there without an O2 bottle!
 
that they stay up there without an O2 bottle!
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yep, specialized accomodations for high flyin' that we don't have!
"The birds have a specialized variant of the hemoglobin alphaD subunit; this protein has a high affinity for oxygen, which allows the species to take up oxygen efficiently despite the low partial pressure in the upper troposphere."
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
yep, specialized accomodations for high flyin' that we don't have!
"The birds have a specialized variant of the hemoglobin alphaD subunit; this protein has a high affinity for oxygen, which allows the species to take up oxygen efficiently despite the low partial pressure in the upper troposphere."
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I would like to have a specialized variant of the hemoglobin alphaD subunit too.
 
there could still be wave even without a ground based feature to trigger it. or perhaps something like a river valley would be enough. I've seen lenticulars over wisconsin triggered from wind bouncing off the mississippi river valley.

Birds could also dynamically soar up that high as long as the wind velocity steadily increased up to that altitude.
 
The resulting goo is called "snarge":

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2005/09/68937

>>
And its not just birds. Sometimes jet-stream encounters can take a page from the X-Files. "We've had frogs, turtles, snakes. We had a cat once that was struck at some high altitude," said the Smithsonian's Dove. She says birds like hawks and herons will occasionally drop their quarries into oncoming planes. "The other day we had a bird strike. We sent the sample to the DNA lab and it came back as rabbit. How do you explain to the FAA that we had a rabbit strike at 1,800 feet?"
​
<<
 
i suspect the rabbit laden hawk got startled at the oncoming airplane and dumped its ballast.

i wonder what the air speed velocity of a rabbit laden hawk is?
 
FarSide+1-14.jpg
 
slightly on topic, I took a night hawk in the windshield of my pickup before sunrise today, at 65mph. These are pretty small-mass birds and it sounded like the windshield should have imploded. In the next few seconds we were talking about what a turkey vulture (also common here, 6 lbs) would do to the Bellanca perspex at 3x that speed!
 
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hopefully it would kill the bird and miss you.

i've always thought the worst thing about hitting a bird would be if i got injured to the point of being incapacitated and/or if the bird didnt' die and was suddenly very angry in an enclosed space that included me.
 
I remember hitting a small bird, maybe a sparrow, on my motorcycle years ago. I was going maybe 45 and it bounced off the windshield. The windshield didn't break but it sure bent back quite a bit absorbing the impact. It was almost like hitting a rock. I was just glad it didn't hit me in the face. I can only imagine what it would be like hitting something bigger.
 
I had a flight instructor tell of hitting a goose in a 172. Said the windscreen completely imploded and they had to run at full power to maintain slow flight to get back to the airport.
 
CJones said:
I had a flight instructor tell of hitting a goose in a 172. Said the windscreen completely imploded and they had to run at full power to maintain slow flight to get back to the airport.
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Should have broke out the rear windows as well. Air needs somewhere to go.
 
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