Random bored thought II - Crop duster awe

455 Bravo Uniform

455 Bravo Uniform

Final Approach
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455 Bravo Uniform
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Was driving the other day and went to pull over and roll the windows down to watch when my wife said “What are you, crazy? We’re going to get poisoned!” to which I said “Yeah, but I wasn’t really worried about it”.

Again, no commentary needed about my sanity or my risk vs reward selection, but rather: For those of you who have flown ag, what do you do when a “fan” stops to gawk at the awesomeness of your craft and they are in the path of your mission?
 
Very engaging flying, but Parkison's no joke. I can get the same fun with an RV without the occupational neurotoxic opportunity cost. One of my desires in retired life is to dabble in aerobatic instruction, I think it's an often overlooked space for recreationalists stuck in fac built snooze can tunnel vision.
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
Was driving the other day and went to pull over and roll the windows down to watch when my wife said “What are you, crazy? We’re going to get poisoned!” to which I said “Yeah, but I wasn’t really worried about it”.

Again, no commentary needed about my sanity or my risk vs reward selection, but rather: For those of you who have flown ag, what do you do when a “fan” stops to gawk at the awesomeness of your craft and they are in the path of your mission?
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0 F's given from what I can see. If you're sitting right in their path, you're almost certain to catch a little drift (or maybe get the full blast) . Best to watch offset a bit. The fungicide won't hurt you even if you were standing in the field, but now most fungicide gets insecticide thrown in "while we're at it". That stuff is still not super toxic to vertabrates, but i also wouldn't volunteer to be sprayed with it. The real risk is to the guys mixing & loading it though.

They're fun to watch, until they start flying under power lines. Freaks me right out.

I'd love to fly one just to see how it performs.
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
Was driving the other day and went to pull over and roll the windows down to watch when my wife said “What are you, crazy? We’re going to get poisoned!” to which I said “Yeah, but I wasn’t really worried about it”.

Again, no commentary needed about my sanity or my risk vs reward selection, but rather: For those of you who have flown ag, what do you do when a “fan” stops to gawk at the awesomeness of your craft and they are in the path of your mission?
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Very frustrating if the person parks downwind and we have to leave the field and not finish because they won’t move. You can’t just spray it thinking they should know better and it’s their fault…it’s always our fault. As long as they are upwind and out of the way, no worries. As many crazy people are out there though, it always makes you wonder who’s watching because they think it’s neat and who’s trying to get video evidence of something they think you’re doing wrong. Had a buddy get shot at a few weeks ago.
 
Spent a lot of time “flagging” for crop dusters before they started using gps in my younger days. Been sprayed a lot.
 
Our daughter and fam lived in Yuma for a while. The first time I ever saw them crop dusting at night. Felt like some kind of alien movie. The brightest LED lights I had seen…

No thanks. I’ll stay with being another recreationalist stuck in fac built snooze can tunnel vision - with the occasional fighter pilot wannabe formation flying (complete with breaks/rejoins, Extended Trail fake BFR, overhead breaks, and element takeoffs/landings).
 
Llewtrah381 said:
Our daughter and fam lived in Yuma for a while. The first time I ever saw them crop dusting at night. Felt like some kind of alien movie. The brightest LED lights I had seen…

No thanks. I’ll stay with being another recreationalist stuck in fac built snooze can tunnel vision - with the occasional fighter pilot wannabe formation flying (complete with breaks/rejoins, Extended Trail fake BFR, overhead breaks, and element takeoffs/landings).
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The night spraying isn’t bad once you get used to it although I always preferred the helicopter for night ops. Was nice to be able to land anywhere if weather moved into the valley.

Regarding spectators the times have changed. The industry standard is we make sure no one gets sprayed. If someone is in the way we leave and come back later. That doesn’t mean there aren’t a-holes out there that don’t care but they generally don’t have many friends in the business. With the cost of drift insurance every operation I flew for was very careful to keep the product on the crop. When I was running my operation full drift coverage ran me about 40k a year for a single aircraft policy. One outfit I worked for had a pretty big operation and his policy for hull / drift was over 1 mil a year. No one wants a claim.
 
I spent a week bicycling in Iowa a few weeks back, watching the crop dusters work was far more interesting than any airshow I’ve seen.
 
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aterry1067 said:
If I were to ever be paid to fly, my dream job would be a crop duster or fire fighter/bomber.
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I've thought the same for fire bomber in another 10 years or so. Will probably take that long anyway to accumulate the experience required at the rate I'm going :rolleyes:
 
Jim K said:
They're fun to watch, until they start flying under power lines. Freaks me right out.
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I was flagging on the west end of a field one evening. The boss said, “Let me know when I get to a power pole and have to fly over the wires instead of under. I can’t see them.”
 
Thanks for sharing that. I learned a bit about the pilot from the comments. Very cool.
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
That’s him in the video.
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Ahhh...thanks.

Further reading, seems he was killed in his experimental after a improperly reinstalled rear locking collar on the elevator control torque tube allowed the torque tube to move rearward during his flight and loosened the elevator control cable tension.
 
Zeldman said:
Ahhh...thanks.

Further reading, seems he was killed in his experimental after a improperly reinstalled rear locking collar on the elevator control torque tube allowed the torque tube to move rearward during his flight and loosened the elevator control cable tension.
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He also served in Special Forces in Vietnam and won a Silver Star.

John Walton – MACV-SOG

sogsite.com sogsite.com
 
Dana said:
Sounds like he chose to live his own life rather than live in the shadow of Daddy's money.
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When the film was made Walmart was a successful, but small, regional company. He was working, at least in part, because Daddy didn't have real money yet, though it's also worth noting that simply being a pilot is very much a shadow of Dad. Sam Walton was famous for scouting store locations from his Ercoupe. When John Walton died in 2005 he was one of the nations wealthiest men (#4, IIRC), and not because of crop dusting.
 
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