Canon lens wreaks havoc

[RAWcop]

Article from local newspaper. I guess Superman was taking some pictures.
Petaluma house damaged by mysterious camera lens dropped from sky | PressDemocrat.comar

The real tragedy here is the loss of an "L" lens. Get some plywood and stop crying lady!

[dlambert]

I'm dyin' to know the rest of *that* story.

[NathanFranke]

The picture looks like it fell through the roof over the porch--that should not cost $4,800 to fix. Get a second opinon, lady.

I used to do aerial photography for tobacco crop estimation. The camera sat in a foam nest over a hole in the fuselage, pointing straight down. The way has the detach lens button designed, if the foam had pressed too hard on the button, this could have happened there, too. As far as FAA not knowing about any flights, here's how a usual day would go:
Pilot, to Tower: "This is November 1234567. I'm going to be doing north-south flight lines over Wake County today at 6500'."
Tower: "Ok."

No more communication than that--we took off and landed from a grass strip behind the plane owner's house. I'm willing to bet that's the same kind of situation that happened here.

[UlpilotSC]

I used to take lessons in a small helicopter, and I've flown in a lot of small planes. We never filed flight plans. You don't have to for every flight. There will be a radar trace of their transponder code, but if they were flying VFR without tower support, their transponder code was probably set to 1200, which tells the tower nothing.
So if the lens owner didn't register the lens when it was bought, there may be no way to tell who was at fault. Especially if the pilot was a friend of the photographer. Pilots can generally be held responsible for stuff falling out of planes. This might be a situation where both parties wisely agree to keep quiet. It also might be a case of the photographer dropping a lens and feeling too ashamed to say anything, the pilot might not know.

I like the quote on the article. " the real mystery is how that little hole costs 4600$ to fix". Sounds like someone's trying to fix the roof and get a new set of living room furniture. I'm having my whole roof redone following a hailstorm. It's costing 5200$... (it's costing state farm that...not me).

[Jim Bryant]

I flew on and off while serving in the Never did drop anything. All that money to pay for a porch? What do that want.....a Tai Mahal of porches?

[metallion58]

4600$ ?
Apparently, somebody is confused between porch and Porsche.

[3bayjunkie]

I would guess it fell from a helicoptor as i don't often see people flying with the windows down on a plane but many times helicoptors have their doors off.

[MattG]

How about skydivers? Mid-air lens switch going awry...probably not!

[cyber3d]

Obviously it fell from somewhere in the 5th dimension!

[Jonbar18]