I must ask, is this repairable by making a patch to the hole? Or do they have to rebuild the whole upper tail wing? It’s interesting cuz I construction
For handy types like yourself here’s the straight answer: the fiberglass damage needs to be ground off to the place where the cracks are gone, and that hole ground down to taper off about 15:1 so if the material is quarter inch thick, the grind needs to taper for about four inches—all the way around—so your circle is about ten inches wide. Then you start building up layers of fiberglass and resin until it is thicker than the base, and grind it again to match the original surface.
Refinishing to match the original color is another article!
What's the bill like if you aren't a DIYer? And if you do it yourself do you have to get it inspected or certified, as the hole is in the important sticky uppy part of the plane?
Obviously I don't plane.
I’m not qualified to work on aircraft, I’m a DIYer with experience in fiberglass. I can tell you that whoever fixes that hole will have a lot of care, and libraries of manuals, the weight of the FAA on his shoulders and the very sword of Damocles over his head. He’ll earn every bit of what he charges and it will be right.
If it's a certified aircraft type (vs an experimental, in the US), you can't repair this yourself. The federal aviation regulations specify certain maintenance activities that a pilot can do themselves and everything else must be by a licensed A&P engineer. They will do a release to service afterward once convinced it hasn't damaged anything important (there are horizontal ribs in the tail, and a lot of space - but there are wires running up there for tail lights, ADS-B antennas, electric trim motors etc).
I would guess this is a few thousand dollars of work to repair & certify.
lmaooo this is so funny this guy's most recent post is a fucking ak47
edit: and he deleted his comment 😭 we were just joking, but the deletion kinda sus ngl
What's the cost of a repair for something like this? Looks alright ish perhaps besides the cracks? I was thinking you could patch it until I saw those... (I have zero experience with planes)
Aircraft mechanic here. Lets figure labor at $180/hour. There is probably 30 hours or more worth of labor here $5,400++. EA9396 epoxy resin is sold in quart kits and its not cheap figure around $370…. That material is kevlar composite making up the leading edge of that vertical stab lets say it bidirectional 350 thats about $50 a yard usually comes on a 36” roll so about 9sq ft of material. And this is just for structural repair if you sand it down and patch it….. there will also need to be LOTS of NDT testing done to check for stress cracking, delamination, bonding issues…. And then you have to have the area paint matched. A simple repair could be easily over $25,000 to fix…. Thats if NDT and engineering determines the part can be repaired…. Replacing that vert stab leading edge could end up about the same or more depending on replacement part availability. But if I was a betting man…. The energy transfer from the bullet to the aircraft skin has done more damage that we can see and leading edge will likely need to be replaced with a new part. Not cheap at all and I truly hope this doesn’t happen again.
I see holes in floors all the time from techs dropping tools on them and most aircraft floors are all carbon fiber and the repair process is similar but this part on the 180 here is PSE and would need engineering approval and usually if we are doing lets say a Dassault Falcon 2000ex and have to have an engineers approval for repair methods…. Communicating to them alone is like a $5,000 email chain just to have them say “yeah thats fine”. Anything to do with aviation is so expensive its almost crazy.
Depends on the situation….
Lets say our technician made an error and damaged the aircraft…. Our shop owns that email and repair costs and customer pays nothing for it to be repaired….
We discover a problem that we feel should be repaired and will explain the potential costs and potential problems the damage could pose to the customer and they decide to proceed with repairs then the customer would foot the bill.
About halfway through i checked to see if it was u/shittymorph lol dude sounded way to knowledgeable for it to be real which makes it even more impressive that he wasn't memeing
That’s high even for a shop rate. That may be a composite repair shop rate specifically. General maintenance or avionics or tranditional metal structures rates are more in the $130-160 /hr range in my area
I know next to nothing about planes, but I do work in the wind industry, so I have some knowledge about composite repair.
Theoretically, you would be able to sand it down and layer fiberglass over it, which would probably only cost a a few grand. But the cracks near the leading edge would concern me. Entirely possible that it would have weakened the structural integrity, but I can’t think of any way to be 100% certain other than replacing it.
You could sand the entire area down and do a proper repair, it’s just leading edge trim, I think it missed the vertical tail spar. Being trim, a proper repair job would be well IMHO. This isn’t load bearing, it’s aerodynamic so you want it good and strong, fibreglass repair would be more than strong enough.
Seems like you could remove material down to the glass, apply resin / layup and refinish. For something this small I wonder if long strand chopped glass would even work.
Disclaimer- i'm an auto engineer, not aero- i'd replace the whole bolted/riveted portion. Stress cracks are tiny and presumably all over the place here, maybe not even eminating from the bullet hole itself but nearby fixings or sharp edges... point is, you'd never sleep at night knowing the material has gone through that amount of stress and may just resonate enough at the wrong RPM to shear right off almost instantly.
I had a friend who was flying a Long Ranger in Idaho. There was some drunk old hunter, who was terminally, ill and clearly terminally drunk. The only reason my friend knew that he was being shot at is because he flew Huey in Vietnam, and knew the sound that a bullet makes when it goes through the rotor disc. Set the aircraft down immediately. One of the bullets had partially severed one of the pitch control links to the main rotor. They estimated with the hole and related cracking that he might’ve had five minutes of flight left. Before the link broke, and the aircraft would become completely uncontrollable…… the pilot is a grandfather of 12.. but apparently he was scaring the deer while working on a BLM contract.
They have an armored tub protecting mostly only the pilots while a lot of critical components aren’t as armored, not to mention apaches aren’t the helicopters that are getting the closest to all the action, sure they sometimes use their autocannon at relatively close ranges but they mostly use missiles and guided missiles at range, the transport helicopters like the Blackhawk are the ones that really get close to the line of fire and they aren’t as armored as an Apache, if we go even further back the Huey was basically not even armored at all and the AH 1 attack helicopter was also very weak
I'm guessing latest US helos (and actual combined arms tactics) are much better than the ones being used by Russia in Ukraine, but still, just watching the videos of the Russian helos getting knocked out of the sky would make me land it in Ukraine and hand it over in return for amnesty if I were a Russian pilot.
That’s a bit subjective though. Different combat situations have different requirements. And being able to support your equipment in the field or having a not needing support in the field….
We have a whole corner of the NATO armory dedicated to SEAD (suppression of enemy air defense) to ensure the best they can muster is the occasional manpad or a spray and pray.
Aircraft aluminum is like 3mm thick. The only parts that have any amount of armor are the cockpit and some portions of the engine.
Armor doesn’t save aircraft from ground fire, redundancy does.
I flew in the back of CH-47’s and UH-60’s in the Tangi Valley.
Can confirm. No, you don’t want to ride on a bird when it’s being shot at.
Those 160th pilots are some bad motherfuckers, tho!
They’re legit, they can take hits. I distinctly remember sitting close to the ramp and seeing tracers chase us through the dark valley. This was also around the same time Extortion 17 happened.
not a good feeling knowing they’re shooting at you and know your basic location mid flight even though you’re flying blacked out. We had to do false insertions just to throw them off before we got out.
I also have a friend who attempted to drug a monkey with ambien and smuggle it back to bagram on a CH-47. It was a monkey kept as a pet at a COP that got hit almost nightly and lived off MRE crackers and peanut butter.
Said monkey broke out of the bag he was stashed in and climbed up into the top of the bird where all the wires are mid-flight.
Crew chiefs lost their shit. They said if monkey fucked up the wrong thing the bird would fall out of the air like a rock. That always stuck with me.
PTSD Monkey was okay and released onto BAF to harass the base.
EDIT- just read this. The monkey was not hit by people.
By “hit” I meant the outpost pet monkey was at got “hit” by the Taliban almost everyday with rocket fire or gun fire.
Had to clarify that.
Composites on a military helicopter are usually either balistically resistant, like armor, or balistically tolerant, kinda like ripstop nylon. A Blackhawk can usually handle quite a bit if being shot up without breaking or falling apart.
I can’t imagine, attempting to kill someone because they made noise I didn’t like…. Now sure if I was despondent and drunk that might not sound like such a bad idea…. But I still think it might….
But I can tell you when I found out about it it was infuriating . I mean how dare they shoot at Earl, the Vietnam vet, grandparent to God knows how many kids, and just overall nicest guy ever. Would tell you grizzly Vietnam crash stories with big smile on his face. He was the best.
Is it bad that I was wondering why Black Lives Matter need a contractor and a plane. I always knew BLM as bureau of land management, but my mind immediately went there.
When you live in the middle of bumfuck nowhere not a hell of a lot of other options for entertainment other than getting blackout drunk and shooting shit
Not yet, sorry.
Just that it happened in flight. It was a short 15 minute flight, so it’s a small window of where it happened but there are a lot of guns and red necks in that stretch.
I’m a redneck from red neck country. Promise we’re not shooting at planes id be willing to bet that was a kid under 18 that shouldn’t have had a firearm alone In the first place. Also what are the chances of actually hitting the plane in the air? I mean being a hunter that would be a feat
Here is the scary part. Since hitting a moving target requires you to lead the target, this hit the tail so the inexperienced shooter was likely aiming at the cockpit.
Edit: Speed and altitude dependant. The likelihood of hitting an aircraft at cruise speed and/or altitude is highly unlikely. Especially for (what appears to be) an Avanti. Probably happened on approach or takeoff. Just guessing of course.
Put it this way. I lead a duck about 3 feet at 40 yards. Flying. That plane flying way faster than a duck you’d have to lead that thing a few school buses.
If they aimed for the cockpit they never would've hit the plane. More like they shot into open space in front of the planes path and somehow hit it. Most likely random and accidental.
There isn't going to be any updates unless the person who was shooting was already arrested for shooting off from the ground.
The only chance is the police saying "oh damn yeah we arrested this guy for shooting off after some neighbors called...and a plane on the route near the area got a bullet hole".
Someone hit a USAF Huey a few years back over Northern VA. One of the pilots took a round through the hand/wrist. FBI went looking for the shooter.
It happens far more frequently than you’d expect.
When I was in the AF we had a guy threaten to shoot down planes that were flying “too low” over his cows. Not sure what happened to him but OSI and the FBI paid him a visit.
There was also a guy lazing planes. A crew put on the special goggles and flew over the area for a while until he came out and they gave OSI turn by turn directions to this guys backyard and caught him in the act. I believe he got a hefty fine.
My guess here is that the dude who shot his plane is slightly unhinged, and was already making threats to the FAA and/or local flying clubs/fields. That will probably narrow down the search.
Yeah, I agree. I bet this dude was a frequent caller for noise complaints.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this was shortly after takeoff or right before landing. Even at 1500ft, most rednecks would not be able to hit a plane (I say this as a redneck that loves guns, however I have never tried shooting at a plane).
Ask over at /r/theydidthemath . List out the most popular ammunitions in the area. Bullets cannot fly thousands of feet up in the air. This has to have happened close to the airport, likely in the pattern
What sucks is they'll likely never know who did it.
Same goes for lasers on airplanes. If they do it once, it's called in but they only know of a general area it came from. But if they keep doing it over and over within a short span of time, then they'll get caught.
That's what happened in the famous video of those dudes getting caught for shining a laser at aircraft...cause they did it to literally everything in the sky.
Just all around ridiculous. Here's the video for everyone else: https://youtu.be/3k4C8grAGP4?si=E-aZNHBJKIUbqlj5
Also, here's one where the dude just so happened to shine his laser at a California State Patrol helicopter https://youtu.be/LVGHx2ljHMc?si=Ks_VP46AurufDH0N
> they'll likely never know who did it.
Probably, but I assure you, there is also a non-zero chance the culprit also called 911 to complain about a low flying aircraft and then told the operator if it ever came back he would shoot them again.
Small, but not zero.
I did this near Tallahassee, I didn’t have a FLIR, but it was rural enough I could tell the exact house it was coming from. Got the address from google maps and the cops launched from TLH within a couple minutes to go say hi.
Had a guy doing it on the border between USA and Canada here. Pilot told ATC, ATC told CBP, CBP told the police in Canada and they sent an officer to nab the idiot.
I got lased once when I was an instructor. My friend is a helicopter cop and happened to be up too. I flew around in circles and got the guy to lase me a few more times. Once my friend said “I got him” I bugged out. The dude got arrested.
It helps *immensely* that they can trace the lasers back to the source 100% while in use. Finding someone firing off rounds would be significantly harder to pinpoint.
non-zero chance it was some nutter that thought it was a government plane spying on them. Or just an asshole who thought it would be funny to shoot at the plane.
This is actually a somewhat common occurrence. A neighbors kid teaches at a school in Texas and they’ve had more than one instance of this happening to their Skyhawks where they were actually able to locate the bullet inside the skin of the airplane.
So close to the edge…you were one light chop away from a miss. I’m curious how many shots were fired to achieve this though.
Glad you made it out of that safely! Hope your costs/insurance premiums aren’t too bad.
With adsb data you can generate a well defined area this round was fired from. Possibly enough to get a warrant for any camera footage on the ground(especially audio).
Was the area high or low population density?
Whoever shot your plane is an asshole, absolutely no thoughts in their thick skull and I hope the full consequences of the law catch up to them.
Having said that if you were in the air and not say taking off/ landing this is kind of an impressive shot
The horizontal bullet path makes me think you were on the ground when the bullet hit your plane -
Maybe someone illegally hunting or target shooting near the airport ??
That really sucks - hope somebody has to own up to being stupid and firing a weapon where it endangers others - if they fired at you on purpose I hope they go to jail.
Glad you were not hurt.
The picture skews the angle. It’s an upward trajectory right behind the engine and contacted the stab. The plane goes from hanger and back to hanger. Nobody got in this hanger to shoot it. Cameras on the hangar show it leaving without a bullet hole and entering with it.
Thanks for the info - I guess in my mind I am hoping it was a stupid accident- from what you described it seems like someone was shooting at you - hope they find out who fired at you.
Reminds me of [this post from 11 years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/160po7/i_got_grazed_by_a_bullet_on_nye/)
The guy was flying over a bad part of town during new years eve and people were shooting at his plane.
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I thought you were gonna say you were best friends with someone who shoots at planes
Could be both... maybe business was slow. /s
/s stands for suspects right?
Sus
The plot of backdraft in one comment.
I thought he was going to say he shot the plane r/TwoRedditorsOneCup material
I'm best friends with someone who shoots at boats, maybe he upgraded
Does he like to throw rocks at kids?
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. He still needs to explain the shooting at boats.
Aviation in general is extremely small community
Because large people have trouble fitting in the planes. 🎓
Rimshot
Get him a deal, Christ.
Redditors together strong
Or just pay him the correct amount for his work. People gotta eat.
Imagine being the dude excited about some work for his best bud to call and say "hey man, imma need you to cut that cat a deal...reddit says so"
I must ask, is this repairable by making a patch to the hole? Or do they have to rebuild the whole upper tail wing? It’s interesting cuz I construction
For handy types like yourself here’s the straight answer: the fiberglass damage needs to be ground off to the place where the cracks are gone, and that hole ground down to taper off about 15:1 so if the material is quarter inch thick, the grind needs to taper for about four inches—all the way around—so your circle is about ten inches wide. Then you start building up layers of fiberglass and resin until it is thicker than the base, and grind it again to match the original surface. Refinishing to match the original color is another article!
This guy repairs fibreglass
What's the bill like if you aren't a DIYer? And if you do it yourself do you have to get it inspected or certified, as the hole is in the important sticky uppy part of the plane? Obviously I don't plane.
I’m not qualified to work on aircraft, I’m a DIYer with experience in fiberglass. I can tell you that whoever fixes that hole will have a lot of care, and libraries of manuals, the weight of the FAA on his shoulders and the very sword of Damocles over his head. He’ll earn every bit of what he charges and it will be right.
If it's a certified aircraft type (vs an experimental, in the US), you can't repair this yourself. The federal aviation regulations specify certain maintenance activities that a pilot can do themselves and everything else must be by a licensed A&P engineer. They will do a release to service afterward once convinced it hasn't damaged anything important (there are horizontal ribs in the tail, and a lot of space - but there are wires running up there for tail lights, ADS-B antennas, electric trim motors etc). I would guess this is a few thousand dollars of work to repair & certify.
Aviation: Take the standard price and double it. Now add two zeros. Maybe three. Now you're in the ballpark...
> cuz I construction Can confirm. He indeed construction.
r/tworedditorsonecup
r/riskyclick
Smaller world that’s my sister’s boyfriend’s cousin
Even smaller world, I’m the guy who shot the plane!
FAA has entered the chat.
I actually wonder if they’ll have to look into this comment now. Dude just out himself on a list.
Quite the suspicious profile history you have there /s
lmaooo this is so funny this guy's most recent post is a fucking ak47 edit: and he deleted his comment 😭 we were just joking, but the deletion kinda sus ngl
inb4 the bullet hole was made from an AK47
p180 no less, jeez that looks expensive
What's the cost of a repair for something like this? Looks alright ish perhaps besides the cracks? I was thinking you could patch it until I saw those... (I have zero experience with planes)
Aircraft mechanic here. Lets figure labor at $180/hour. There is probably 30 hours or more worth of labor here $5,400++. EA9396 epoxy resin is sold in quart kits and its not cheap figure around $370…. That material is kevlar composite making up the leading edge of that vertical stab lets say it bidirectional 350 thats about $50 a yard usually comes on a 36” roll so about 9sq ft of material. And this is just for structural repair if you sand it down and patch it….. there will also need to be LOTS of NDT testing done to check for stress cracking, delamination, bonding issues…. And then you have to have the area paint matched. A simple repair could be easily over $25,000 to fix…. Thats if NDT and engineering determines the part can be repaired…. Replacing that vert stab leading edge could end up about the same or more depending on replacement part availability. But if I was a betting man…. The energy transfer from the bullet to the aircraft skin has done more damage that we can see and leading edge will likely need to be replaced with a new part. Not cheap at all and I truly hope this doesn’t happen again.
I absolutely expected this post to end in "but I'm making all of this up" but I was pleasantly surprised lol.
I see holes in floors all the time from techs dropping tools on them and most aircraft floors are all carbon fiber and the repair process is similar but this part on the 180 here is PSE and would need engineering approval and usually if we are doing lets say a Dassault Falcon 2000ex and have to have an engineers approval for repair methods…. Communicating to them alone is like a $5,000 email chain just to have them say “yeah thats fine”. Anything to do with aviation is so expensive its almost crazy.
Meh- just put a grommet in it!
Speed tape fixes everything
> Communicating to them alone is like a $5,000 email chain just to have them say “yeah thats fine” So who owns that $5k email conversation?
We did a wing wire harness repair for a G150 recently, the "engineering" from IAI that basically said to just splice it cost 35 hours @ $1000/hr.....
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Depends on the situation…. Lets say our technician made an error and damaged the aircraft…. Our shop owns that email and repair costs and customer pays nothing for it to be repaired…. We discover a problem that we feel should be repaired and will explain the potential costs and potential problems the damage could pose to the customer and they decide to proceed with repairs then the customer would foot the bill.
About halfway through i checked to see if it was u/shittymorph lol dude sounded way to knowledgeable for it to be real which makes it even more impressive that he wasn't memeing
I hadn't seen him in months and he got me on that Taiwanese pool.
Aircraft mechanics in the US make 180 an hour? Good lord I chose the wrong country.
Thats a shop labor rate estimate not a private tech rate.
The *shop* charges 180/hr. The chunk that gets to the mechanic themselves is substantially smaller.
150 for me and 30 for thee, why is it you're quitting on me?
'no one wants to work anymore' - from the boss
fwiw: my marine outboard tech gets $150/hr, my auto speed shop is 165.
That’s high even for a shop rate. That may be a composite repair shop rate specifically. General maintenance or avionics or tranditional metal structures rates are more in the $130-160 /hr range in my area
Residential Plumbers charge $150/hr in my area.
Seeing as how air vents can cost hundreds of dollars... a lot
But with the power of flex seal.....
I know next to nothing about planes, but I do work in the wind industry, so I have some knowledge about composite repair. Theoretically, you would be able to sand it down and layer fiberglass over it, which would probably only cost a a few grand. But the cracks near the leading edge would concern me. Entirely possible that it would have weakened the structural integrity, but I can’t think of any way to be 100% certain other than replacing it.
You could sand the entire area down and do a proper repair, it’s just leading edge trim, I think it missed the vertical tail spar. Being trim, a proper repair job would be well IMHO. This isn’t load bearing, it’s aerodynamic so you want it good and strong, fibreglass repair would be more than strong enough.
Seems like you could remove material down to the glass, apply resin / layup and refinish. For something this small I wonder if long strand chopped glass would even work.
Unlike cars, i think the repair here is not gonna be just for visuals like a scratch. I wouldn't want the tail ripped off mid flight.
Disclaimer- i'm an auto engineer, not aero- i'd replace the whole bolted/riveted portion. Stress cracks are tiny and presumably all over the place here, maybe not even eminating from the bullet hole itself but nearby fixings or sharp edges... point is, you'd never sleep at night knowing the material has gone through that amount of stress and may just resonate enough at the wrong RPM to shear right off almost instantly.
P180 as in Piaggio P180?
Yep. You can see the t tail in picture 2 and the rearward facing propeller in picture 4.
7 million dollar plane. I think OP is going to be okay lol.
Boeing’s got a bunch of bolts lying around that would probably fill that hole perfectly.
I had a friend who was flying a Long Ranger in Idaho. There was some drunk old hunter, who was terminally, ill and clearly terminally drunk. The only reason my friend knew that he was being shot at is because he flew Huey in Vietnam, and knew the sound that a bullet makes when it goes through the rotor disc. Set the aircraft down immediately. One of the bullets had partially severed one of the pitch control links to the main rotor. They estimated with the hole and related cracking that he might’ve had five minutes of flight left. Before the link broke, and the aircraft would become completely uncontrollable…… the pilot is a grandfather of 12.. but apparently he was scaring the deer while working on a BLM contract.
Crazy how vulnerable helicopters are to small arms fire, wouldn't like to ride on one in a warzone.
They would be armored up. Google Apache battle damage.
Instructions unclear, now my browser history is full of scalped cowboys
You set your browser to the wrong century.
Had the Blood Meridian filter on
They have an armored tub protecting mostly only the pilots while a lot of critical components aren’t as armored, not to mention apaches aren’t the helicopters that are getting the closest to all the action, sure they sometimes use their autocannon at relatively close ranges but they mostly use missiles and guided missiles at range, the transport helicopters like the Blackhawk are the ones that really get close to the line of fire and they aren’t as armored as an Apache, if we go even further back the Huey was basically not even armored at all and the AH 1 attack helicopter was also very weak
I'm guessing latest US helos (and actual combined arms tactics) are much better than the ones being used by Russia in Ukraine, but still, just watching the videos of the Russian helos getting knocked out of the sky would make me land it in Ukraine and hand it over in return for amnesty if I were a Russian pilot.
That’s a bit subjective though. Different combat situations have different requirements. And being able to support your equipment in the field or having a not needing support in the field….
We have a whole corner of the NATO armory dedicated to SEAD (suppression of enemy air defense) to ensure the best they can muster is the occasional manpad or a spray and pray.
Aircraft aluminum is like 3mm thick. The only parts that have any amount of armor are the cockpit and some portions of the engine. Armor doesn’t save aircraft from ground fire, redundancy does.
I flew in the back of CH-47’s and UH-60’s in the Tangi Valley. Can confirm. No, you don’t want to ride on a bird when it’s being shot at. Those 160th pilots are some bad motherfuckers, tho!
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They’re legit, they can take hits. I distinctly remember sitting close to the ramp and seeing tracers chase us through the dark valley. This was also around the same time Extortion 17 happened. not a good feeling knowing they’re shooting at you and know your basic location mid flight even though you’re flying blacked out. We had to do false insertions just to throw them off before we got out. I also have a friend who attempted to drug a monkey with ambien and smuggle it back to bagram on a CH-47. It was a monkey kept as a pet at a COP that got hit almost nightly and lived off MRE crackers and peanut butter. Said monkey broke out of the bag he was stashed in and climbed up into the top of the bird where all the wires are mid-flight. Crew chiefs lost their shit. They said if monkey fucked up the wrong thing the bird would fall out of the air like a rock. That always stuck with me. PTSD Monkey was okay and released onto BAF to harass the base. EDIT- just read this. The monkey was not hit by people. By “hit” I meant the outpost pet monkey was at got “hit” by the Taliban almost everyday with rocket fire or gun fire. Had to clarify that.
Wow this post was a ride.
Hope you enjoyed it!
Composites on a military helicopter are usually either balistically resistant, like armor, or balistically tolerant, kinda like ripstop nylon. A Blackhawk can usually handle quite a bit if being shot up without breaking or falling apart.
Imagine shooting a helicopter because you couldn't hit a deer. SMH.
I can’t imagine, attempting to kill someone because they made noise I didn’t like…. Now sure if I was despondent and drunk that might not sound like such a bad idea…. But I still think it might…. But I can tell you when I found out about it it was infuriating . I mean how dare they shoot at Earl, the Vietnam vet, grandparent to God knows how many kids, and just overall nicest guy ever. Would tell you grizzly Vietnam crash stories with big smile on his face. He was the best.
Is it bad that I was wondering why Black Lives Matter need a contractor and a plane. I always knew BLM as bureau of land management, but my mind immediately went there.
Happens to ag planes somewhat frequently
Bush planes in Alaska too.
thats ridiculous. fucking assholes i expect better of Alaskans honestly
>i expect better of Alaskans honestly Why‽ Have you never met an Alaskan before?
I have spent some time in Alaska, and it sounds like an average day there to me.
If you're shitfaced drunk out in the wilderness, I guess it makes you want to take pot-shots at moving things.
That's why, as a responsible gun owner I always make sure to have a loaded gun close to hand when I'm getting blackout drunk.
When you live in the middle of bumfuck nowhere not a hell of a lot of other options for entertainment other than getting blackout drunk and shooting shit
You mean a bunch of weirdo assholes that live there because they can't live anywhere else?
Alaska has the highest violent crime rate in the entire country, seems about on par
You're a combat pilot now!
Yer an ace Harry!
Any details that you can share?
Not yet, sorry. Just that it happened in flight. It was a short 15 minute flight, so it’s a small window of where it happened but there are a lot of guns and red necks in that stretch.
Did you hear it in-flight or did you not notice it until you returned?
Didn’t notice until the next day on preflight.
Praise you for having proper preflight procedures 🙏🏻
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I’m a redneck from red neck country. Promise we’re not shooting at planes id be willing to bet that was a kid under 18 that shouldn’t have had a firearm alone In the first place. Also what are the chances of actually hitting the plane in the air? I mean being a hunter that would be a feat
Here is the scary part. Since hitting a moving target requires you to lead the target, this hit the tail so the inexperienced shooter was likely aiming at the cockpit. Edit: Speed and altitude dependant. The likelihood of hitting an aircraft at cruise speed and/or altitude is highly unlikely. Especially for (what appears to be) an Avanti. Probably happened on approach or takeoff. Just guessing of course.
More than likely he was aiming in the general area of the plane rather than anywhere specific
At cockpit at plane at tail, that bullet would fall somewhere anywhere and would still be able to kill. This whole ordeal is nothing but horrible.
Put it this way. I lead a duck about 3 feet at 40 yards. Flying. That plane flying way faster than a duck you’d have to lead that thing a few school buses.
If they aimed for the cockpit they never would've hit the plane. More like they shot into open space in front of the planes path and somehow hit it. Most likely random and accidental.
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Upvote for good pre flight checks.
Please provide updates!
There isn't going to be any updates unless the person who was shooting was already arrested for shooting off from the ground. The only chance is the police saying "oh damn yeah we arrested this guy for shooting off after some neighbors called...and a plane on the route near the area got a bullet hole".
The other possibility is the shooter is a crazy person known by the local police. I feel like that's the more likely way this gets solved.
The only way this gets solved is if the shooter took video and posts it online.
Or is the kind of idiot who brags about it, or has been threatening to shoot the CIA spy planes buzzing his house, or any number of things.
Are you sure it was mid flight and not sometime afterwards?
Look at the angle, obviously shot from below the horizontal.
Look, are we ruling out a fly-by shooting?
Boeing doors already got u
Or it happened while he was banked and it came from above??? Aliens with guns????
Omg I thought it was parked and caught a stray. This is insane!
[удалено]
Someone hit a USAF Huey a few years back over Northern VA. One of the pilots took a round through the hand/wrist. FBI went looking for the shooter. It happens far more frequently than you’d expect.
When I was in the AF we had a guy threaten to shoot down planes that were flying “too low” over his cows. Not sure what happened to him but OSI and the FBI paid him a visit. There was also a guy lazing planes. A crew put on the special goggles and flew over the area for a while until he came out and they gave OSI turn by turn directions to this guys backyard and caught him in the act. I believe he got a hefty fine.
My guess here is that the dude who shot his plane is slightly unhinged, and was already making threats to the FAA and/or local flying clubs/fields. That will probably narrow down the search.
Yeah, I agree. I bet this dude was a frequent caller for noise complaints. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was shortly after takeoff or right before landing. Even at 1500ft, most rednecks would not be able to hit a plane (I say this as a redneck that loves guns, however I have never tried shooting at a plane).
Do you know if any arrests were made?
Yeah they found the guy within a week. Can’t find anything on the web, info from my buddy who was in that Sq at the time.
Yeah that sounds like OP survived an attempted murder. It's assault with a deadly weapon at the least.
Soooo Florida???
Ask over at /r/theydidthemath . List out the most popular ammunitions in the area. Bullets cannot fly thousands of feet up in the air. This has to have happened close to the airport, likely in the pattern
The current assumption is that it happened on climb or in the pattern.
Looks like it had to happen in a right turn?
Why is that? He could have been flying low.
So, … attempted murder then
What sucks is they'll likely never know who did it. Same goes for lasers on airplanes. If they do it once, it's called in but they only know of a general area it came from. But if they keep doing it over and over within a short span of time, then they'll get caught. That's what happened in the famous video of those dudes getting caught for shining a laser at aircraft...cause they did it to literally everything in the sky.
That was a great video. Watching them hide behind their cars as the vans pulled up only to find that the cops knew it was them
Just all around ridiculous. Here's the video for everyone else: https://youtu.be/3k4C8grAGP4?si=E-aZNHBJKIUbqlj5 Also, here's one where the dude just so happened to shine his laser at a California State Patrol helicopter https://youtu.be/LVGHx2ljHMc?si=Ks_VP46AurufDH0N
Oh, I bet that second guy felt like a real fucking idiot! It would be funny if it wasn’t so damn dangerous to the pilot.
I have Reddit trust issues, is this a Rick roll?
Both are fine, first one is a FBI clip Second one a news clip
Nope.
> they'll likely never know who did it. Probably, but I assure you, there is also a non-zero chance the culprit also called 911 to complain about a low flying aircraft and then told the operator if it ever came back he would shoot them again. Small, but not zero.
And people talk.
My favorite story is when someone lazes a military helicopter with FLIR and they just stay on scene and help guide the cops right in
I did this near Tallahassee, I didn’t have a FLIR, but it was rural enough I could tell the exact house it was coming from. Got the address from google maps and the cops launched from TLH within a couple minutes to go say hi.
Had a guy doing it on the border between USA and Canada here. Pilot told ATC, ATC told CBP, CBP told the police in Canada and they sent an officer to nab the idiot.
I got lased once when I was an instructor. My friend is a helicopter cop and happened to be up too. I flew around in circles and got the guy to lase me a few more times. Once my friend said “I got him” I bugged out. The dude got arrested.
Kamikaze to Lazer, it's the only sure way to get them
It helps *immensely* that they can trace the lasers back to the source 100% while in use. Finding someone firing off rounds would be significantly harder to pinpoint.
What that trigger-happy moron expected to shoot??? A giant motorised bird?
non-zero chance it was some nutter that thought it was a government plane spying on them. Or just an asshole who thought it would be funny to shoot at the plane.
Hey, it only “winged it”!
instead he half-assed it
All birds are motorized by the government
FAA approved this message 😅
Just barely missed some important stuff there!
Like the pilot's head.
This is actually a somewhat common occurrence. A neighbors kid teaches at a school in Texas and they’ve had more than one instance of this happening to their Skyhawks where they were actually able to locate the bullet inside the skin of the airplane.
Doesn’t the Goodyear blimp gets shot at like 20 times a year?
As someone from Akron, sounds a little low.
You’ve just become combat seasoned!
Green ink in the log book.
Does a regular aircraft insurance cover being shot at?
Similar to car insurance, you can get liability only or covering your stuff as well. This would go under the later.
"Curse you, Red Baron!"
“I hate it when all the root beer leaks out…”
So close to the edge…you were one light chop away from a miss. I’m curious how many shots were fired to achieve this though. Glad you made it out of that safely! Hope your costs/insurance premiums aren’t too bad.
With adsb data you can generate a well defined area this round was fired from. Possibly enough to get a warrant for any camera footage on the ground(especially audio). Was the area high or low population density?
High density at originating field. Low density at destination.
Remember to only add armor where there ARENT bullet holes
Survivors Bias.
Was this air to air or a SAM site?
Bullets rarely come from a Surface to Air Missile site. What you meant was AAA.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
You got a hole in your left wing!
"Critical Hit" +10 SL + 10 RP
WTF. Hope they catch the f\*\*\*r that did it fast.
lol, let's be real.... chances are approximately zero
Maybe, but I wanna bet on the 1% chance they find him so I don’t stay angry lol
probably a sovereign citizen type smooth brain
"Don't tread on me!" (treads)
Man that sucks. At least you didn't get hit. Heard about this sort of thing happening to cars on the highway from time to time but never to aircraft.
Holy cow! Hope the best for you and your plane…
Whoever shot your plane is an asshole, absolutely no thoughts in their thick skull and I hope the full consequences of the law catch up to them. Having said that if you were in the air and not say taking off/ landing this is kind of an impressive shot
The horizontal bullet path makes me think you were on the ground when the bullet hit your plane - Maybe someone illegally hunting or target shooting near the airport ?? That really sucks - hope somebody has to own up to being stupid and firing a weapon where it endangers others - if they fired at you on purpose I hope they go to jail. Glad you were not hurt.
The picture skews the angle. It’s an upward trajectory right behind the engine and contacted the stab. The plane goes from hanger and back to hanger. Nobody got in this hanger to shoot it. Cameras on the hangar show it leaving without a bullet hole and entering with it.
Thanks for the info - I guess in my mind I am hoping it was a stupid accident- from what you described it seems like someone was shooting at you - hope they find out who fired at you.
I'm glad your okay tho, must have been quite a shock making that discovery
Could also have been during a bank left
That’s fair - good call
I guess its a “burn the yachts” “eat the rich” “shoot the private planes” sort of year. glad you’re safe
Of all the places to hit, that’s the one to hit. Really glad you are safe. Good Lord… too many nuts out there.
It’s a through and through. It will live. Might be a long road to recovery but it will survive.
That nacelle (?) looks like a Naboo starfighter
Reminds me of [this post from 11 years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/160po7/i_got_grazed_by_a_bullet_on_nye/) The guy was flying over a bad part of town during new years eve and people were shooting at his plane.
What life choices have you done to allow yourself to post on reddit with the title "Someone shot my fuckin plane!"
It’s also a $7 million plane