Most collisions occur within a kilometer of the ground during takeoff and landing, with only 3% of such incidents recorded in-flight. While the likelihood of a catastrophic accident may be low, there have been instances where birds significantly disrupted the operations of air traffic controllers and pilots.
"The House of the Fastest Chickens in the World": what it is and why it was created.
Birds may reign supreme in the skies, yet they have consistently faced defeat since the dawn of aviation in 1905. It was then that pioneering pilot Orville Wright reported the first bird strike. Each year, thousands of birds find themselves too close to aircraft, unable to evade the collision, resulting in their tragic demise.
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In the battle of "Birds vs. Airplanes," birds often come out on top.
These incidents prompted aviation regulatory bodies worldwide to devise a method for testing aircraft components for bird strikes. Following two accidents in the 1960s, the National Research Council of Canada's Aerospace Research Centre, alongside military experts, regulators, manufacturers, and pilots, established a committee to investigate bird strikes and create a testing device for them.
The committee settled on a concept developed by the Royal Aeronautical Society—a cannon powered by compressed air. What does this cannon fire? Bird carcasses weighing up to three and a half kilograms.
The first test of this weapon targeted the aircraft's structural components—the windshield, wing, and tail assembly. In the second test, a bird was launched into a running engine.
"For calibration tests, we can use gelatin birds or chickens purchased from the grocery store," explained senior researcher Azzeddine Dadouch from the Centre. "We will use real birds when it's time for the final calibration and certification test. Birds—always only dead ones—are used in our tests in their actual form: with feathers, heads, legs, and everything else..."
The combination of air pressure in the tank, the weight of the projectile, and the length of the barrel determines the speed at which the bird will collide with the test article, corresponding to the speeds used by the target aircraft during takeoff, initial climb, flight, and approach for landing.
However, in the late 1970s, the Centre conducted tests at astonishing speeds. A two-pound gelatin-based projectile reached a speed of 1.36 Mach, or over 1600 km/h. This led to the creation of a poster that still hangs on the wall at the Aerospace Research Centre, proudly proclaiming the research center as "Home of the Fastest Chickens in the World."