NASA and chickens

the history of the Chicken Cannon was to test the canopy of the F-16 back in the early to late 70's, first they fired the frozen birds at the canopy with good results, then someone thought that most birds wont be frozen when the hit the canopy but thawd so the engineers decided to try the un-frozen birds to make it more realistic and found out the frozen bird caused more distruction then frozen, now just about everything that has been designed for high speed is now in line for the "Chicken Cannon" to see if it too could hold up to the distructive power of a bird body flying at high speeds at it, I've seen everything from canopies to trains to auto grilles to missile payload skirts being fired on

smokinguns3; whats your fathers name? I might know him I'd used to be in the 302nd AW at Pete Field

You would be surprized what a much smaller bird can do at lower velocities.  We hit something about the size of a dove at 140 kts and it went through the greenhouse of a Blackhawk.  Granted it is just plexiglass but it takes a fair ammount of force to punch a hole straight through that stuff.  And you wouldn't believe how long it took to clean that little bitty bird out of my bird.

Mac

72cuda wrote:

I've seen everything from canopies to trains to auto grilles to missile payload skirts being fired on

i can vouch for the fact that a Rangerover grill won't stand an impact of a pidgeon at 40 mph, there was feathers and plastic all over the place and a bloody mess to hose out of the radiator matrix. UGH.

all the best.

Greg

goatmonkey wrote:

the chicken cannon story aside, I wouldn't trust much of what Mythbusters declares as "myth busted". Some of their proofs looks pretty solid and i'll admit watching them blow stuff up is very entertaining but their experimental methods seem pretty severely flawed. I couldn't give any specific examples since I stopped watching the show but i do vaguely remember something to the effect of them just trying something once and declaring the probability of it ever happening as null and void. The discovery channel has been going down-hill as far as scientific merit lately.

AMEN Goatmonkey!  The Discovery Channel was one of my favorite educational channels They might as well go to network television instead of cable.  You have to watch a lot of crap before you get to see something that is new and interesting.

gregers wrote:

72cuda wrote:  I've seen everything from canopies to trains to auto grilles to missile payload skirts being fired on   i can vouch for the fact that a Rangerover grill won't stand an impact of a pidgeon at 40 mph, there was feathers and plastic all over the place and a bloody mess to hose out of the radiator matrix. UGH. all the best.   Greg

Well, I know a Mazda 6 won't take a dove to the grille at 50 mph either! Nasty, just nasty! Found the main carcass a month later when I took the front end off to change the headlights and fix the grille