Re: High Speed Chicken Tests

[Jane Coyle <coylewis@netlink.com.au>]

An old old old oldie but a goodie.  True story pre-dated XPT by thirty
years, but hey!

"<==MeČ==>" wrote:
> 
> 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."... :-) "