Holy Hail Damage

[Silver Bullitt]

I bet this left the pilots with some brown skid marks.

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[Qcman17]

Yeah he likely went through a box of Fruit of the Looms before he got on the tarmac!

 

[Shifting_Gears]

The nose cone is comparatively soft to the rest of the body, if I’m not mistaken.

Not to downplay, but that explains the massive caving in of that section. Regardless, it took the surrounding paint off.

My real question is, what the HELL happens to the engines in a situation like that?! They’ll vomit it a single bird hits them... let alone hundred or thousands of hail pellets.

Wouldn’t want to have been on that flight!

 

[Blue Moon]

Nose cones are usually a high-quality fiberglass, which is transparent to the radar waves coming out of the antenna mounted behind the nose cone.

We hit a flock of ducks on one of my last night flights in the C-130. One of them hit dead center of the nose cone and made a hole about 3-4 inches wide, and its little duck feet were still sticking out after we landed. Another duck hit right below the pilot's windshield, punched a hole through the aluminum skin and lodged in the space behind the instrument panel. There were feathers floating around in the flight deck, and it smelled like electrocuted duck meat. We didn't know how much damage we had, just that it smelled funny and the wind was cold and a lot noisier than normal, so we declared an in-flight emergency and landed. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that was my last IFE.

 

[Shifting_Gears]

Nose cones are usually a high-quality fiberglass, which is transparent to the radar waves coming out of the antenna mounted behind the nose cone.

We hit a flock of ducks on one of my last night flights in the C-130. One of them hit dead center of the nose cone and made a hole about 3-4 inches wide, and its little duck feet were still sticking out after we landed. Another duck hit right below the pilot's windshield, punched a whole through the aluminum skin and lodged in the space behind the instrument panel. There were feathers floating around in the flight deck, and it smelled like electrocuted duck meat. We didn't know how much damage we had, just that it smelled funny and the wind was cold and a lot noisier than normal, so we declared an in-flight emergency and landed. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that was my last IFE.

Wow, that was not a good day for the ducks.

What altitude did that happen at?

 

[Blue Moon]

Wow, that was not a good day for the ducks.

What altitude did that happen at?

It wasn't long after take off, maybe about 2000 feet.

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