FAA looking after pilot drops turkeys on Arkansas festival

The Federal Aviation Administration says it will check to see whether any laws or regulations were broken when a low-flying pilot dropped live turkeys onto an Arkansas festival over the weekend.

The annual Yellville Turkey Trot in northern Arkansas has included a turkey drop for more than five decades, though sponsors in recent years have distanced themselves from the practice.

"As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." Well Les, wild turkeys can fly.
However the domesticated birds can't fly to save their lives, as you learned.

Reminds me of another real incident that happened many years ago during the beginning of the the jetliner age, while designing jetliners.

The decision was made to shoot frozen (dead) turkeys at the windshield with an air cannon to test the effectiveness of the glass to impact.

The first test did not go well...

The turkey went through like a hot knife through butter and continued through the rear cockpit bulkhead and kept on going...

Someone forgot to specify that the birds should be thoroughly thawed first!!

They used to toss them from the top of the courthouse....now it's from a plane.

I agree that this is a very inappropriate thing to do. It is hard to believe that the authorities have allowed this to go on year after year. Throwing them from a courthouse would be much more humane. I am assuming they stopped that because most of the wild turkeys probably got away since jumping off of a courthouse would to them be similar to jumping out of a tree.

It is amazing to me that wild turkeys thrown out of a airplane going approximately 100 mph survive at all. Obviously most meet the wind tail first or in some other odd angle and at a much higher airspeed than God intended. Many probably have their wings broken or damaged immediately. It is a miracle that any of them are able to achieve controlled flight before hitting the ground no matter what altitude they are thrown out of. This would be a risky stunt even for a parakeet.

I fly and own several hang gliders, an ultralight aircraft and a general aviation airplane. We live on a small airport. Flying a hang glider is the closest experience to flying like a bird. But even when jumping off a cliff we have to launch into conditions where the wing will meet the air at an angle of attack and airspeed where it will produce the appropriate amount of lift. Too much lift and the wing will break.

If you jumped out of the back of a military transport airplane with a hang glider the wing would most likely be destroyed instantaneously. Even if it were not; it is unlikely that you could get things under control before hitting the ground even if jumping from high altitude.

The only way to perform this stunt would most likely be to have a properly designed harness on the hang glider attached to an anchor point in the transport airplane. I have such a harness that we use to tow a hang glider behind a boat. You would then have to be released into the wind from the back of the airplane in the correct orientation and the airplane would have to be traveling less than the hang glider's maximum allowable airspeed. It would still be difficult because of turbulence from the airplane. It might be possible, but probably not for turkeys.

You simply cannot toss a 25mph bird from an airplane going at least 55mph.

You have got that right! When you are flying over populated areas at low altitudes you mostly have to keep your airspeed quite a bit higher than your stall speed.

One time my wife and I were flying over a coastal range of mountains and spotted a pickup truck which had driven off of a logging road. I took several passes to try and get the authorities any useful information. With the wind conditions and the close proximity to the hillside I didn't feel that it was safe to go much less than 100 mph. Which meant the accident scene kept going in and out of view in almost an instant.

But according to a couple articles I just read, turkeys can actually reach an airspeed of close to 55 mph. Since this has been going on for a number of years... the flight crew may have figured out how to slow the plane up using full flaps and having an assistant launch the birds beak first into the wind. This might help to explain how a few of the turkeys are actually able to survive launch, land and still be intact enough to try escape from their waiting hungry human predators.

A Cessna 172 can get down to 34kts with full flaps.

I am not sure where you are getting your numbers. Here is link to a typical Cessna 172 Pilot's Handbook.
Cessna 172 Pilot's Handbook.pdf

On page 5-12 there is a chart that shows the airspeeds that stalls occur at various flap settings. With full flaps it shows the stall speed is 48 KCAS (knots calibrated airspeed).

But you can't fly a Cessna 172 around safely at low altitudes with full flaps barely above the stall speed. When a 172 stalls the nose can end up abruptly pointing toward the ground without enough altitude to recover.

If you look at page 5-1 you will see a chart that demonstrates the source of some confusion about a 172’s stall speed from sources such as Google. At high angles of attack approaching stall there is a significant difference between indicated airspeed and calibrated airspeed. At 40 knots indicated the calibrated airspeed is actually 49 knots or 56.4 mph.

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