birding-aus

Canada Goose Cull

To: Carl Clifford <>
Subject: Canada Goose Cull
From: Scot Mcphee <>
Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2009 18:55:35 +1000

On 20/06/2009, at 12:13 , Carl Clifford wrote:

Such a cull is as about as sensible and useful as the mediaeval practice of culling cats on the grounds that they may become witches' familiars. Seeing as it invariably the aircraft which strike the birds, the blame and duty of care, should perhaps be placed on the aircraft manufactures and operators for not having an adequate avoidance system. After-all, airliners do have systems to assist with avoiding other aircraft. Birds are much slower moving than aircraft and should be fairly easy to detect, especially ones the size of Canada Geese

I don't agree with the culling by any means - but I have to point out the TCAS (collision avoidance) relies on each aircraft to have a transponder in it, which transmits the aircrafts flight parameters to the other one. (and that means your "general aviation" type aircraft doesn't have it). The two systems "negotiate" an avoidance - it relies on predictable behaviour on the part of the aircraft - each system tells each pilot what to do and he does it without question, e.g. one aircraft pulls up the other one down. Only stall and ground proximity warnings have a higher priority than TCAS. I don't belive that geese can be fitted with transponders nor relied upon to obey the system's verbal orders when detection triggered.

The radar cross-section of a bird would be pretty small, A weather radar might do the trick but how to avoid collision? A flock would be pretty easy to detect but I can't see a reliable avoidance system being particularly effective.

Putting an expensive aircraft into the Hudson river is hardly a favourable outcome for the airline so I'd expect that if there was a simple solution to birdstrike the aircraft manufacturers would already have implemented one.

regs
scot
===============================
www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com

To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to: 
===============================

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Admin

The University of NSW School of Computer and Engineering takes no responsibility for the contents of this archive. It is purely a compilation of material sent by many people to the birding-aus mailing list. It has not been checked for accuracy nor its content verified in any way. If you wish to get material removed from the archive or have other queries about the archive e-mail Andrew Taylor at this address: andrewt@cse.unsw.EDU.AU