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My wife and I took our flight training at Detroit City Airport (DET). A nice field, with a tower, way underutilized -but the neighborhood was something else! You did not want to drive through there at night, daytime was scary enough. This led to a couple of interesting things that you just reminded me of. The first was that a couple of Piper Tomahawks at the flight service we rented from also had bullet holes in them. Reportedly, they did not occur in flight, but from the locals "plinking" at them while they were tied down in a row in front of the hangar. The mechanics also reported that frequently they were working in the hangars at night (these hangers were in the old terminal building, built in the 1920's, with HUGE hangar doors that were glass for the top 10 feet or so to admit some light) and the locals would shoot out the windows in the top of the hangar doors. The rounds would come in and ricochet around while everyone ducked for cover. No reported injuries. You know how a warbird is worth more if it has actual combat history, rather than being produced after the war, or having been used only for stateside training? Well, our joke was that when the Tomahawks were listed it should say something like "1978 Piper Tomahawk. Genuine combat history, served in Detroit 1978-1994, repaired battle damage properly noted in aircraft logs". The other thing that came to mind was an approach on a July 4th evening. As you know, even commercial fireworks are generally well below the altitude we fly. Well, we found the neighbors were getting a little too accurate with their fireworks when we descended to pattern altitude. We were also concerned that there might be unseen rounds coming up at us along with these huge commercial fireworks they were shooting at us (Detroiters are known for discharging firearms into the air at times like this, and on New Years Eve -the police helicopter fleet is grounded for about 3 hrs around the midnight hour on that occasion). We climbed and reported this to the tower. We were the only ones in the pattern, so we received permission for an overhead approach, keeping it right over the field rather than the surrounding neighborhood. We came in unscathed. I know this was off-topic, but thought you might get a kick out of it. Michael J. Nutt Warren, MI Darwin Girdauckis wrote: ----[Please read http://ercoupers.com/disclaimer.htm before following any advice in this forum.]---- Hmmm! Maybe I should mount guns on the wings! Least then I wouldn't go down fer lack of shootin back! ;^) Darwin David Abrams wrote: > ----[Please read http://ercoupers.com/disclaimer.htm before following any advice in this forum.]---- > > Damn, > > I am buying some Kevlar tomorrow! > > David > > -----Original Message----- > > I checked the Ercoupe accident database (1,048 Coupes some with more than > one accident/incident), and found the following accident and incident > reports: > > Bullet hole 1 > > ========================================================================== ==== > To leave this forum go to: http://ercoupers.com/lists.htm ========================================================================== ==== To leave this forum go to: http://ercoupers.com/lists.htm ========================================================================== ==== To leave this forum go to: http://ercoupers.com/lists.htm
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