Well, here's an informal poll. Name a few odd things that have happened to you while flying?

I'll go first:

Last week, I left work early one day, and decided to exercise my thumbs by putting around the back pasture with my slowstick, and while I was flying around, I heard a familiar 'meow.' I looked down for a few seconds, and saw my 15lb orange male tabby, Sumer(it's soo-mer, not summer), sitting by my feet. We don't call him the yellow peril fer nuthin'! Just after I looked back up to spot the SS, I just about got bowled over. Sumer jumped all the way from the ground to my shoulder, and all the sudden I was trying to fly with his front paws on one shoulder, rear paws on the other, and tail switching back and forth across my face! Yikes! That made an interesting few minutes......I still have the pawprints on my jacket to prove it.

Got a bunch of 'em!!!! In the field, there is a hand only water pump. In all of 50 acres.....guess where my Enigma lands?
Yep, full blast into pump...ripped wing right off!!!
Landed in dog poop once too. Can't tell ya how many times I've walked up to my launch area and forgot either batteries, rx and esc etc....And a good one, once while flying my T-52, father in law was flying his firebird xl. His path crossed mine and his firebird was instantly turned into swiss cheese.

Dave...

one time i was flying at my club (which is surrounded by bush, except for the entry) with the S&B Komet, when all the kangaroos started to make a run for it, i was looking around to see what was up with them, then i saw a little joey left on his own about 25m away from me. Then a feral dog that looked like a cross between a staffie and ridgeback sprinted across the flightline, grabbed the joey's neck, shook him to his death, ripped him in two and ran off with him back into the bush.

damn. that's pretty crazy. You managed to observe that and not crash? impressive.

it was one heck of a moment, my brother, dad and another flying buddy were there. It shore did make a noise

it was lucky because we only had our little chiuhua running around there only a couple of weeks before

are there any other interesting stories out their guys

Many years ago, at my first contest, I managed to land off field onto a sheep pasture. The nosy critters had to come over and look at the big white bird. One especially brave one managed to step on the wingtip, effectively putting me out of the remaining round.

...ya had to have been there

Sometimes when i am out on the runway doing a perfectly normal high speed low fly by, this darned big black animal that is as hard as stone reaches out and grabs my airplanes, it almost looks like a skunk except that the stripe is a bright yellow instead of the normal white.

I did have to perform an emergency landing because I was worried about the safety of my wife and daughter when a man said, I ain't got it!! Whew,, that was scary

A while back we had a semi-tame crow hanging around our field. One day I was flying happily on my own when something large and sharp whacked me on the back of the head and sent me spinning. I managed to ge the plane down in an erratic fashion and then looked ahead to see the crow sitting on the ground looking at me quiziclcally with its head tlited to one side as if to say "hey, stop playing with that thing, pay me some attention!"

Shortly afterwards, the 'owner' turned up and compained I was mistreating her pet!

Weird

Almost lost my Miss2 a couple weeks ago, when I unknowingly stood right smack on top of a fire-ant hill while flying.....and I was wearing sandals!

There we were, me dancing a wild jig while trying to fly, and my wife undoing the straps of my sandals and crushing/brushing all the ants off my feet and ankles. My feet felt like they were on FIRE!!

I did get "MISSY" back on the ground safely, but I'll never know how I did it!

Like the man said, "You had to have been there"!!

Jamie

Part II of my story:

Shortly after the cat left me alone and went about his business, it started to get dark--no problem, it's curtek equipped, and I've flown it more at night than in the daytime. Only problem is that we live under the extended approach for several large airports, so sometimes if I look away for a second or two, I have to figure out which set of nav lights is the slowstick at 75' and which is the gulfstream at 5,000'(usually the speed gives it away). Well, I blinked, and one of my contact lenses bunched up in my eye, so I was effectively blinded for about 10 seconds. When I could see again, I frantically tried finding the right set of lights, becuase I had been flying inverted and knew bad things were about to happen. I found it just in time to fly through the outer branches of a cedar tree on the edge of the pasture. The wingtip caught a branch, spun the plane 360*, and it kept going inverted--I blipped the throttle and gave full down. Perfect inverted landing with nary a scratch--didn't even knock the strobe loose from the top of the rudder .

BTW, the cat is not curtek lighted, nor does he fly--the first sentence was referring to the SS, before one of you smarty-pants catches me for that.

I was flying my Electric 46" Speed 400 Super Cub, when it was attacked by a very mean Magpie. The first attack was a dive from behind impacting on the left wingtip, resulting in a bit of a wing wabble and the loss of some altitude. The Magpie Menace climbed away from the poor cub, did a stall turn, and executed a frontal attack in a dive of about 30 degrees. He broke the spine of the cub, the tail came off, and in it went. The Magpie retreated into a nearby tree and watched the poor, stupid human pick up his toy and leave.
This attack occured while I was living in New Zealand about 4 years ago. I'm beginning to think there must be something about the wild life downunder!

While I was flying something or other, I decided to walk a short distance to take advantage of some shade.

Stepped into what could only be a gopher hole, right leg went in up to my crotch, dropped the radio, watched it slide along the grass, just out of reach, watched my plane go into a slow spiral.

Was able to climb out, grab the radio and finish up.

No one was around to see this

I was flying a 40 sized plane with a foam core wing that had survived three fuselages many years ago, before I discovered electrics. Anyway, the plane deadsticked in a field just across from us. By the time we got there a couple of horses had gone over to inspect it and one had decided that it looked tasty. It took a big enough bite out of the wing that it had to be retired. It was a good wing too.

I was flying my python in a large field at my grandma's house this summer. It was a high lift day...didn't take much to get altitude so I was having a lot of fun going up high and doing high speed dives. Eventually some type of a bird (I'm not a bird guy so I don't know what kind) started chasing my python pretty agressively.

My python is pretty speedy so it was an even match, I tried dodging it for a while but the bird was very manouverable and I couldn't shake it. So I pulled a dirty trick...I went inverted and pulled full up elevator to do an inverted half loop. This freaked the bird out a bit, and unable to execute the same manouver it just took off and kept flying away.

It was a lot of fun though, wish I could get into dog fights more often