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Home > Archive > Emergency services > January 2005 > Latest on the DC Medevac copter crash
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Latest on the DC Medevac copter crash
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| poboxdc@ix.netcom.com 2005-01-12, 2:09 am |
| Latest on the DC Medevac copter crash
Investigators aren't ruling anything out as they try to
determine what caused a helicopter to crash into the Potomac
River near the Wilson Bridge.
Ellen Engleman Conners is chairwoman of the National
Transportation Safety Board.
She says operator failure is one possibility, along with
the weather, tall cranes in the area for building the new
bridge, and birds, which could've become tangled in the
chopper's engine. The wreckage is being taken to the NTSB
academy in Ashburn, where investigators will take a closer
look at it.
She also says four frames of a highway video taken on
the Wilson Bridge will be examined at a lab in Washington.
Although the video quality is poor, Conners says it appears
to show the chopper losing altitude.
Authorities are also inspecting five cranes along the
bridge, to determine if they might have been hit by the
chopper. The two tallest cranes will be examined at seven
am Wednesday.
http://www.wusatv9.com/news/news_ar...x?storyid=36171
What kind of birds fly at night?
As the copter (all copters) approached this area near National
Airport, they must fly at 200 feet, however the cranes being
used to build the new spans of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge are
300 feet high .... pretty dangerous if you ask me!
KM
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| Jim Carriere 2005-01-12, 2:09 am |
| poboxdc@ix.netcom.com wrote:
<snip snip>
> She says operator failure is one possibility, along with
> the weather, tall cranes in the area for building the new
> bridge, and birds, which could've become tangled in the
> chopper's engine. The wreckage is being taken to the NTSB
> academy in Ashburn, where investigators will take a closer
> look at it.
<snip>
> http://www.wusatv9.com/news/news_ar...x?storyid=36171
>
>
> What kind of birds fly at night?
Um, you'd probably be surprised. I do quite a bit of night flying as
a helicopter instructor, and I see them once in a while. If we have
the searchlight on (normal for several minutes at a time on an
instrument approach to an airport, also normal when operating close
to the ground) sometimes I'll see one flash by. I usually mention it
to the student in order to encourage him/her to keep their visor down
and protect their eyes.
I don't know exactly what kind of birds, maybe they're bats. I don't
really care what they are though, I hope if and when I eventually hit
one it doesn't hit at me or my crew!
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| plasticguy 2005-01-12, 7:12 pm |
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Owls.....
Scott
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| Aaron Hicks 2005-01-12, 7:12 pm |
| I used to be a radar operator on a project to track the number of
birds passing through a wind corridor for migratory research. The radar
had been tweaked to give us horizontal and vertical profiles. Remarkably,
we found birds- and lots of them- traveling at night, even in very cold
weather. I never did find out how they kept their eyes from freezing over.
We tracked them in southern Montana during the migratory season,
well into October or November, maybe even December. Of course, the number
of animals dropped rapidly as the migration wound down.
Someone suggested it might have been a bat. It's too cold this
time of the year; they're all in hibernation in that neck of the woods. (I
used to help count bats, too, being a caver and all.)
The address in the header is bogus. Send no e-mail there.
-AJHicks
Chandler, AZ
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| Carey Gregory 2005-01-12, 10:08 pm |
| "plasticguy" <plasticguy@(removethis)charter.net> wrote:
>
>
>Owls.....
Geese...
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| plasticguy 2005-01-14, 11:11 am |
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Owls.....
Scott
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