Lab Tests Airplane Parts for Bird Strikes

The folks at Stork East-West Technology Corporation near Jupiter go through a lot of chickens. But they don't eat them. They use them as ammunition.
First they load their test cannon, which they've nicknamed the "chicken gun," with a dead chicken.  The feathers have been removed from the birds.  They're straight  out of the meat cooler at the supermarket.    
Then they tighten and check everything, and then it's time to fire it.  BOOM!
At their lab near the Beeline Highway, they fire chickens and pheasants at various aircraft parts, such as windshields, landing gear and parts of airplane engines,  to see how they're affected by a bird strike.
"The bird, according to specifications, has to be an exact weight down to the tenth of a gram," said David Lichtman, general manager at Stork East-West Technology Corporation.
Authorities say the U-S Airways plane crash in New York's Hudson River Thursday was apparently the result of a bird strike, when birds were sucked into both of the jet's engines.
"I think it's an unbelievable miracle that the pilot was able to land the plane where he did and have no major injuries. Unbelievable, " Lichtman said.
Stork does tests for some of the biggest names in the aviation business such as GE, Pratt and Whitney and others.
"We're recreating a plane in forward flight, at a flight velocity hitting one or more birds," Lichtman explained.
When a company has a new design for a part, they send it to the Stork lab to be tested first to see if it will withstand the impact from a bird strike.
A Stork official says although rare, bird strikes are a serious threat to airplane engines and other components.
They don't blast chickens into jet engines here.
But they do fire their chicken cannon at various engine parts, to see if they can handle a 700 mile an hour collision with a bird.
What can we learn from the Hudson River crash?
"Every time they have an accident, there's a study done and I'm sure the engine manufacturers will be looking to that to find a way to make their newer designs more robust," Lichtman said.
By the way, not only do they test new aircraft parts, but sometimes the NTSB will bring them pieces recovered from a plane crash for them to test.
It's possible this lab will have a role in the investigation in that New York plane crash. They say they'll get involved if the government asks them to.
Stork has 35 employees at its Jupiter facility.  It opened there in 1997.