couple of questions...

[elche 5]

Hi,This morning (2am) i was(still) doing some work on my computer when i heard a helicopter fly over my house at what appeared to be very low and very fast. I went out onto the balcony with a cup of hot chocolate to take a look at what was going on. I could hear the chopper circling around a few blocks away but couldn't see it (there were no clouds around) until it turned on it's spotlight. I could hear a car being thrashed where the spotlight was and some police sirens down the main road (some one was being very naughty). Anywayz.... the chopper circled around for a few minutes while following the car and then disappeared. I decided to stay out in the balcony to finish off my cup of hot chocolate when (in the same area the helicopter had been not even a minute earlier), a bright light with big red flames came hurdling down out of the sky and disappeared a few hundred feet above the rooftops (obviously it was a large meteorite).Now to the questions...1) It seems strange to me that a helicopter would be flying during the night with no nav lights, beacons or anything else other than a spotlight. Is this typical of Police choppers or did this guy leave in such a rush that he forgot to turn them on ?2) I live roughly at 8NM from YSSY slightly north of RWY07s approach path. If this meteorite had fallen a few hours earlier it could have hit an aircraft on approach to RWY07. Has this ever happened before and how serious do you think it could be ?Reason that i ask is that in the last 2 or 3 weeks a fairly large meteorite fell through the roof of a house in New Zealand and a few days later another fairly large meteorite hit the ground somewhere between Victoria and New South Wales along the Hume HWY... Thanks (sorry for the long post)http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~elche/Genera...a_fl_md_wht.gif http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~elche/Genera...a_fl_md_wht.gifDiego CoslovichWebsite: http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~elche/index.htm (under construction)E-mail: elche@ihug.com.au

[Guest enave]

99.99% of meteors do not make it to the ground. Most of them are no bigger than grains of sand. So even if they are very bright, they burn up high in the atmosphere. I mean, they burn out way, way up there. I know they look like they are close to you, but they aren't and your eyes can't tell the distance to a bright point of light anyway. So there's just no way that you can say that it burned up only a few hundred feet above the rooftops. More likely it was at 80,000 ft.For those few that do survive entry, I suppose the chance that they will hit a plane is the same as the chance that they will hit anything else.

[elche 5]

The one that landed on the couch of a family home in New Zealand was, from what i remember, bigger than the average hand of an adult. The one that landed near the HWY wasn't found but according to witnesses it did hit the ground.Off all the shooting stars that i have seen, i've had to look up at them. The one i saw this morning was pretty much at eye level and was extremely bright.Now, if what you say would be true, that the one that i saw burned up at 80,000 ft, taking the earths curviture into account, the meteor whould have had to fallen atleast 100km (thats being really generous) away from me for it to be seen burning up a couple of 100 feet above the rooftops.... It was defiitely way too bright for it to be that far away and burned out way too low, which is why it amazed me.http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~elche/Genera...a_fl_md_wht.gif http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~elche/Genera...a_fl_md_wht.gifDiego CoslovichWebsite: http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~elche/index.htm (under construction)E-mail: elche@ihug.com.au

[Splash_One 0]

>Has this ever happened before and how serious do you think it could be ?For the serious part, I would think it depends where it hits- obviously it would leave a hole. If it hits a GA plane on the pilots head, he would most likely die. Then the dream of everyone here would come true if they were onboard where they would miraculously fly the aircraft to safety! If it were a large airliner, and hit the pilot or co-pilot, the survivor would be able to fly and the aircraft would get down fairly safely assuming the cabin door is closed If it wasn't closed at a high altitude and you have a hole in the roof then you might have a problem, but if it was just isolated to one area, such as the cockpit I think the passengers wouldnt even know... they would figure the small rattle was turbulence... but I'm not an engineer, for all I know the fuse could have a complete failure and its the end of the world as we known it. If it hits a control surface, one is usually enough to fly, and if it hits the rudder... you can live without that... Say if it hits the ailerons and jams them, just turn with rudder...I'm sure most of what I just typed is total-BS because I've been flying cross country (real life) for a good chunk of my day and im just tired as heck and I can't think straight and I'm doing a run on sentence and now I gotta go to bed because I have work early tommorow.... Jason :-wave

[Guest Citationpilot]

"1) It seems strange to me that a helicopter would be flying during the night with no nav lights, beacons or anything else other than a spotlight. Is this typical of Police choppers or did this guy leave in such a rush that he forgot to turn them on ?"Delaware State Police has night vision goggles and FLIR so they fly "lights outs" unless the spot light is needed. That way the criminal has nothing to shot at and doesn't even know he's being followed.