I had a little excitement while out flying yesterday. I was cruising along and caught something out of the corner of my eye that just very narrowly missed hitting. About 5 minutes later it happened again. I finally realized that they were pieces of this long white stringy crap that's been blowing around here. I've seen it on the ground and some was on my truck yesterday but I didn't expect to see it at 1000ft agl. Later on during my flight I was headed back to the airport and saw something fluttering just outboard of where my strut attaches. The fabric is slit and is sort of formed around that strut attachment and I was worried that it had came loose. I slowed down and scrapped my pattern work to full stop and check it out. It was a piece of that crap that had hit my leading edge and balled up behind the strut and only appeared to be a piece of flapping fabric. I asked around and someone told me they were some crazy type of flying spider which I've heard of. I thought it was some sort of cotton or something..Any ideas??

May have been residue spider web gooey stuff that was expelled from the rocket that shot Nancy & Sarah to the moon a few weeks ago. [Duck!]
Seriously? Flying spider stuff in the sky? Gotta picture?

I was going to guess it was alien DNA, but huge flying spiders makes much more sense...

"There's...some...thing on the wing!"

Yep. Back when I used to fly pipelines it was common. Somedays the entire leading edge was covered with webs. Used to tick me off, always seemed to happen after I washed the plane, plus I figured they probably slowed me down 1/2 a knot.

When I lived in northeast Oregon I saw a lot of them. Really thick during October on warm days of about 70 degrees or higher. They are baby spiders that just hatched out and fly with the wind on a long spider web strand. Natures way of spreading the spider population.

It was really cool around Lexington to go for a night flight and turn your landing light on. It looked like a scene from star wars with all those white shiny buggers coming at you.

You've never seen Charlotte's Web?

Thanks for the video AvidFlyer!
I have to admit - I spent the whole 2:56 waiting for the screaming monster woman...

Have seen these spider webs up to 10,000 ft..sometime lots of them. Don't remember the time of season. Flying a long at first you think you see something but you are not sure..kinda depends on the sunlight. When I get back down on the ground they are all over the leading edge and anywhere they can attach.Maybe contact your local horticulturist to find out what they really are (what kind of spiders). I presume they come from the west as this is our prevailing wind. I will do some checking on the reason for this and get back.
HC

i used to fly trafficwatch around dallas, tx. i saw the spiders for 2 days in a row, and then i wouldnt see them again for many many months.

I believe the technique is called ballooning.

I've flown for hours in my hang glider, with spider web gossamer trailing from every wire and tube. I figure I must've been covered with 'em, too... No side effects so far, though!