Question for anyone out there.Will an owl chase a mini copter if it flys into its territory? I was flying in my back yard this afternoon with my copter about 1 foot off the ground.A Barred owl swooped down at it. I hard landed in front of the owl.It grabbed onto the helicopter with its right talon!!!I throttled up and the tail rotor spun up, scared the owl and he dropped it!!!Was he going to fly away with my copter and eat it? Anyone had this happen?? Let me know. Happy New Year.

Capt, in a word yes, this has been known to happen. I have been followed by, and chased wrens with my aero ace, lots of fun, and had some bigger birds chase my pico fokker, until they discovered that I could turn tighter than they could and ran them off. Buzzards and fast slow sticks will occasionally get into a bit of air combat. It's part of the fun. Some birds will wonder just what is that flying in my territory. You have the best story in a while though.

Have Fun

Tim

I have flown around with Magpies and King Fishers too but we all need to be careful. If you do make contact with a bird please cut the throttle to avoid hurting it as it is illegal in most states to harass or injure most any bird with an RC airplane.

Very cool story though.

Thanks for sharing.

Most of our resident hawks feed of ground mammals, so they are not a big threat to model avaition. A non-resident Northern Harrier took a pass at my 10" WS A4-D Skyray (One of these with Minium R/C gear: http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=740150). Fortunately, I had been watching 'Dog Fights' the night before and used the barrel-roll to move out of his way and onto his 6. That both surprised and upset him. Later, he was getting too curious about the hot-rod micro EDF 30 F-102 (build log: http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=776716) circling near the ground. I went WOT, pulled back and took it vertical about 300'. He left since he couldn't duplicate the vertical, I guess!

one time when i went to my tool box to get a spare prop for my formosa (i was out in a field with it), a cardinal came, landed on the wing, and pecked it a few times, then later walked around it in confusion i thought it was kinda cute, so i watched it and wished i had brought a camera.