I own and fly a Sting LSA. After reading this story you will undoubtedly ask yourself, “what does this have to do with a Sting”. Well, I‘ll give you the answer to that question up front, before you read the article, and then you won’t be confused. Not much!

Now, having established that, there are some connections to my Sting. These are gravity, shared real estate, and a minuscule potential disastrous relationship. If your curiosity has not spiked by now, you are probably on a hospital bed with IVs dripping fluids into your veins and you can’t remember your name either. And if you are thinking that at least two of the three connections describe a divorce settlement, you’re wrong. Even gravity could relate to a divorce I suppose if belongings had been thrown out of an upstairs window.

So let’s analyze the Sting connection to these items before I go into what else is involved. First is gravity. All of us aviation freaks can instantly relate to that monster and how it affects what we do. If Mr. Rotax goes into retirement, who takes over? Mr. Gravity; and he has only one thing in mind, getting us to earth as soon as he can. It is only those air displacement boards on either side of us and our relatively slow speed that prevents the trip down from being very short and news worthy.

Ron's Sting at its hangar

Next is shared real-estate. My Sting lives in a hanger at an airport shared with other similar and dissimilar machines. That sharing can be harmonious, or as physics tells us, “two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time." In that case, we come to the third connection. If my Sting tries occupying the same space as something else at the same time either in the air or on the ground there is a “disastrous relationship” and my Sting will not come out unscathed.

Now that we understand the Sting’s involvement with the aspects of the story, who is the other one involved. This is the fascinating actor in the story. If, say this actor is being acted upon by gravity but does not have devices upon which to deflect air to slow it down like the Sting does. Then suppose it is not traveling slow, but say it is traveling thousands of mph from “very high." When it tries to share the same space with something else that it finds “hard” at that speed (air) it resists, complains, and “blows it’s stack!" This relationship is disastrous to say the least.

Now we know the actor’s part in the story, who's the actor and what’s the story? The plot of the story involves the meteor that smashed into airspace above Wisconsin on the night of April 14, 2010, at about 10:10 pm. It’s size has been estimated to be somewhere between a Volkswagen and one meter. It was visible in its incoming track all across the Midwest and it’s final demise was a gigantic exploding fireball that made momentary daylight out of the night. Exactly where did this incredible final act occur? Over Iowa County in Southern Wisconsin. Here the two actors in the story appear in the same scene. Sting N535N lives in a hanger at the Iowa County Airport somewhere around five miles from where the lone intruder unwillingly become many hot intruders that scattered it’s pieces across the real estate below. When this actor came onto stage and divided, he announced his arrival with a very loud entrance that shook buildings and the ground and was heard 40 miles away.

Consequently, Sting was suddenly awakened by an unbelievable shock wave and long rumbling as the hanger and its foundation shook and the darkness in the hanger interior was momentarily erased. In the photo of the Sting and it’s hanger, the sky about five to eight mile directly behind the hanger is where all the fireworks took place (ironically, vapor trails approximately illustrate the meteor’s path).

An FAAS Wings safety meeting had just adjourned at the Iowa County airport. One of the presenters is the A&P course instructor at a technical college in Janesville, WI that lives just North of the Iowa County airport. He related that he had just returned home when his house began to shake and the night turned into day. He said there actually was a series of explosion sounds. He went immediately to his outside deck and said for several minutes he could hear a fading sound that sounded something like a passing jet as the sonic pressure wave arrived from miles up the path of the meteor as it raced at speeds far exceeding the sound pressure wave it created.

We have another phantom actor in the show that is unknown at this time. As the individual mentioned above stood on his deck listening to the remaining sounds, he could see the nav lights of an aircraft traveling from west to east. The meteor entered from the north west and traveled toward the south east. He said he could not tell if it was a commercial or GA aircraft but either way, the meteor had to have crossed directly in front of him although not particularly close. What a spectacular sight that must have been for that crew.

The next day already there were meteorite hunter individuals from as far away as Phoenix, AZ, on the way to Iowa County to hunt for pieces of the meteor spread across a strip of land estimated to be two miles wide and 12-15 miles long just west of the Iowa County Airport. These people were joined by many from universities and the Discovery Channel trudging across fields to find pieces of the intruder from space. A piece was heard to impact and found on a roof and a student found a piece in the playground of a school that was in the debris field path. Many more pieces have been found, but so far no large chunks have been discovered as expected by the space science people from the University of Wisconsin. The following morning scientists walked the runways of the airport searching for meteorites. None were found there that I know of.

As for Sting N535N, she sat safe in her hanger with nothing coming through the roof. But using imagination, the real estate over which the high speed visitor terminated its flight is the same real estate that N535N and her admiring friend had passed just hours before heading for the left downwind portion to land on 04. Many times in life when I try to emphasize something that is extremely unlikely I have said, “it’s about as likely as being hit by a meteorite”.

Scene of the Great Meteorite Hunt

Now, as I cross this area scattered with meteorites, I think, “you know, if that thing had happened to arrive a few hours earlier while I was crossing it’s final approach, what could have been a possible scenario. I probably would have looked over my left shoulder, saw this burning thing on it’s way, moments later exploding nearby and then finding chunks of iron ripping through 35N’s carbon fiber and plexi canopy. What would I have done? I decided I would have said “Oh S---” (with the mic off of course), put on flaps, turned downwind, to final, and landed. Then parked, gotten out, fell to my knees (they would not be holding me up anyway) and prayed giving thanks. Then I would have found a clean pair of pants and gone home after kissing my Sting goodbye and thanking it for having kept on flying while looking like a piece of Wisconsin Swiss Cheese.

Unlikely? For sure. Totally impossible? Apparently not. Think about the aircraft observed above only minutes from crossing that same piece of sky.

The photo above looks across the fields beyond the wind farm where the event took place. The school where a student found one of the meteorites is in the very center of the photo. Iowa County Airport is 5-7 miles off the photo to the left.

I’m not going to use that “extremely unlikely meteorite” example any more.

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