THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, April 27, 1995 TAG: 9504270352
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 156 lines
In July 1992, an Air Force pilot was flying a low-level training mission over Abilene, Texas, when his jet ran into a turkey vulture. The bird smashed through the windshield, hitting the pilot in the head and killing him instantly. A second pilot in the rear seat managed to land the plane.
One year later, near Reese Air Force Base, Texas, a trainer jet pilot was practicing touch-and-go landings when his T-38 sucked a horned lark into the engine. The motor seized and the student pilot ejected. His instructor, who also was in the plane, received permanent injuries when it crashed.
About 3,000 birds collide with United States Air Force planes every year, causing $60 million in damages, the military estimates. Thousands of birds also smash into private jets, commercial aircraft and commuter airlines. The world-wide problem is increasing as air traffic builds.
``Bird strikes'' cause a plane to crash about every 18 months in the Air Force alone.
On a remote, swampy bombing range about an hour's drive southwest of the Outer Banks, Adam Kelly and his ``BASH Team'' are working to reduce those odds.
``Birds are a serious threat to low-level flying. Technology has not been able to develop a radar system that has enough resolution to detect birds but is small enough to fit into a plane,'' Kelly said last week from his home on the Dare County Bombing Range.
``We're trying to understand the birds so we can give the pilots advice about where and when to fly. We can't keep the birds away from the planes. But pilots can learn how to avoid bird strikes by learning more about the birds.''
With $500,000 from the federal government and two full-time biologists, Kelly heads a ``Bird Air Strike Hazard'' research project for Geo-Marine, Inc., a Texas company that has a two-year contract with the Air Force. He lives and works at the bombing range, between Englehard and Stumpy Point. His study is about half done.
``The thrust of what we're doing is trying to understand the effect aircraft have on endangered species and migratory birds, especially - and the effect birds are having on the aircraft,'' Kelly said, crouching in a thicket to wait for an endangered red-cockaded woodpecker who was expected to appear from a tiny hole atop a 40-foot pine tree.
``I can't say, really, whether I'm doing this for the benefit of the birds or the pilots,'' said Kelly, swatting swarms of gnats as he squinted into the sunrise at the 4-inch-tall bird that had just poked out its head. ``Really, I'm doing it for both.''
A raptor ornithologist from Great Britain, Kelly is not a pilot nor a member of the military. For the past 14 years, he has contracted with the U.S. Air Force to try to reduce the number of - and possibilities for - bird strikes.
His early employment involved flying his pet falcon, Spike, around air fields. The falcon chased other birds away and kept them from nesting at the military training sites. Thousands of airfields around the world have problems with birds flocking around their runways and soaring through their airspace. Not every airfield can afford to hire a full-time falconer to keep the winged creatures at bay.
By determining when and where different species fly, however, scientists hope to help pilots avoid bashing into birds.
``We're just starting to put a model together that will show pilots what times of the year certain species migrate and what altitudes they fly at when,'' Kelly said. ``Pilots can't be expected to be biologists. But if we can generate a computer program about annual bird activities over this specific area, they can spend about a minute before they take off and learn what birds they might encounter mid-flight.
``That way, they can alter their paths slightly, use a different altitude if they have to. During really heavy periods of migration, we could shut down the flights for a day or two. That's pretty cheap insurance when you're talking about losing a $50 million plane - or, worse yet, a life.''
The U.S. Air Force already has a national bird-avoidance model that roughly outlines bird flight periods and patterns from coast-to-coast. The project Kelly and ornithologists Edward Zakrajsek and Andreas Smith are working on will be much more specific - and the first of its kind in the world.
They plan to produce a map on the 46,000-acre bombing range and adjacent Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge lands that will show which birds fly at what altitudes during which time of the year. They hope their project will become a model for other airfields - and that pilots will learn to use the maps as part of their regular routine.
More than 400 training missions - primarily flown by pilots from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro - are conducted over the Dare County site each month. Last year, Seymour Johnson planes recorded 34 bird strikes. In 1993, pilots hit 96 birds. Nine of those accidents cost the military more than $460,000.
``The figures speak for themselves,'' said Seymour Johnson Staff Sgt. Richard Covington. ``A bird avoidance model will definitely save us money - not to mention, possibly, lives. A lot of Air Force bases are built along the migration routes of birds.''
Using four radar systems - one of which they built themselves - Kelly and his crew track more than 200 species of birds that fly over the bombing range and up to 10 miles away. The radar operates around the clock and is linked to video cameras. Zakrajsek and Smith study the films several times a week, recording data on bird size, flight height and direction.
They have recorded large migrations of tundra swans; seen flocks of Canadian geese pass overhead; and watched a bald eagle build a nest deep in the wilderness.
Most birds, they said, stay between 200 and 2,000 feet off the ground. Military planes use air space from 300 to 20,000 feet up. The most dangerous height for pilots to fly, Kelly said, is between 600 and 1,880 feet ``because that's where most of the birds tend to be.''
``Bird movement picks up after dark, which makes it even harder to avoid them,'' Zakrajsek said, pointing to long lines of light streaking across a video that was recorded at 8:30 p.m. Nov. 22.
``This was the busiest night we've seen all year. Nobody would ever have imagined that all these birds were out there. We had no idea ourselves. When we told the pilots, they were horrified. If anybody'd been using that air space at that time, there would've been no way to avoid hitting a bird.''
Turkey vultures pose the most danger to pilots because they generally circle around one area and fly at the same low levels as many military planes. Vultures weigh an average of five pounds each, making them even more problematic because of their size and wide wing span. And pilots loathe sea gulls, because they're so belligerent. ``They aren't a bit afraid of planes,'' Kelly said.
``They aren't really afraid of anything.''
In addition to tracking all species with high-resolution radar mounted on trailers and towers, the biologists attached telemetry collars to 17 turkey vultures at the bombing range. The collars help track the vultures' individual flight patterns - and may give pilots a better idea of how to avoid them.
A $3,000 satellite collar, about the size and weight of a candy bar, is hooked over one turkey vulture's wings to give scientists even more specific data about its movements.
``There are only 40 people in the world using satellites to track birds. What we're doing here is really cutting edge, state of the art stuff,'' Kelly said. ``Our data and maps on this area will be available to anyone in the world. Other airfields need to do this type of study, too.
``The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service were worried that Air Force planes were impacting endangered species that lived near the bombing range. The Air Force was worried that additions to the refuge would increase bird activity on the bombing range and impact the pilots.
``The two governmental agencies thought they were working at cross-purposes. But this study is a solution of sorts. By understanding the birds and their movements, we can help save pilots, planes and birds.''
As Kelly spoke, three turkey vultures hovered overhead. Moving in slow, concentric circles, they spiraled above a bombing target set far out in the peat bog. Suddenly, an F-16 flew in from the treetops. The birds swooped down for breakfast as the pilot pulled up to drop his practice bomb. If the birds - or the pilot - had hesitated another second, they all could have been killed.
``We call those F-16s lawn darts because they only have one engine - so if they hit a bird, they go straight down, fast,'' Kelly said.
``The birds don't know whose air space they're flying in. So the pilots have to be educated enough to keep out of their way.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color staff photos by DREW C. WILSON/
A technician displays a radar image showing the tracks of large
flocks of tundra swans flying across the Dare County Bombing Range.
Hawks soar over the Dare County Bombing Range. The species is one of
several being tracked in a program to reduce ``bird strikes'' on
military aircraft. Such incidents cause a plane to crash about every
18 months in the Air Force alone.
KEYWORDS: BIRD AIRPLANE RADAR by CNB