High Speed Chicken Tests

["<==MeČ==>" <hammerheads@optusnet.com.au>]

High Speed Chicken Tests
Development engineers at Qantas have built a low velocity gun designed
specifically to launch dead chickens at the windshields of planes. The idea
is to simulate the frequent incidents of collisions with airborne fowl to
test the strength of the windshields of its various aircraft. Tested at
differing angles and impacts of varying velocities up to 500 km/hr, the
tests were successful in that there were no windshield breakages. The
Department of Transport were eager to test the gun on Countrylink's XPTs and
requested to borrow the low velocity gun for State Rail engineers to test
the windshields of the XPTs. The aim was to develop a windshield of a design
that would ensure safety with new higher speed trains that various
consortiums were lobbying the government to introduce. Arrangements were
made for the delivery of the gun from Qantas and Countrylink arranged a test
set up. But when the gun was fired at a velocity of just 100km/hr, the
engineers stood shocked as the chicken hurtled out of the gun's barrel,
smashed through the XPT's shatterproof shield, crashed through the Driver's
control console, snapped the backrest of the driver's seat in two and
embedded itself in the back wall of the driver's compartment, and set off
the NAFS fire suppression system. The horrified State Rail engineers quickly
called upon the Qantas engineers to examine the disastrous results of the
experiment. When the Qantas engineers visited the test site and recovered
the dead chicken from the driver's compartment they made only one simple
recommendation. "Thaw the chickens first."... :-) "