Flyboy Conceit

Whenever I get the chance, I watch birds making landings. It's not as instructive as watching airplanes landing, but there are a lot more birds landing and I might catch one anytime -- my favorite is watching them out the window during our weekly dept meeting :)

Now in some ways, it's not a fair comparison. They have far less mass and much more variation in their wing configuration -- they also have to stop with next to zero ground speed.

A notable exception being birds doing a water landing. I had the pleasure of watching some Canadian Geese coming in to land on a pond recently. They had their feet out in front (gear down) and wings shaped so that they looked like an inverted 'w' (full flaps), gliding in on final. One had obviously misjudged the head winds and had to clean up and even add a little power for a few seconds at about +20' AGL. I watched and thought, I've done that.

That isn't the first time I've seen a bird have to scramble for their landing. I find it reassuring that these creatures who make dozens of landings every day of their lives still struggle looking for the perfect landing. Now if only I could see my CFI porpoise ...

Another recent insight while observing feathered pilots was a finch who decided he needed to be looking the other way when he was perched at the very top branch of a young tree. Since birds' feet are made for perching and landing, they aren't designed for rotating 180° allowing him to turn around on that narrow branch. So, he flaps a couple times, climbs almost straight up, waits for the stall (probably 5' or so), then at the peak, he dropped one wing, spun a half circle and dropped in to land on that branch facing the other way. Yes, I was jealous.

First I thought, given his extreme acceleration, it might be a useful trick to quickly change direction for a fighter. Then while reading about the required maneuvers for a Commercial license, I found out what that bird did was a very high power, precision Chandelle. I wasn't taught that one for my Private, but I hope it's part of the curriculum for pilots in the Rocky's and near the canyons in the southwest. It looks like a great move to escape getting boxed in by terrain.