Crop Duster Acres

[Kayak Jack]

Tales From The Log Of the Ruptured Duck

I took another pilot, Dan Schiffer, along and went to visit a crop duster on Friday. We dropped in to a sod runway on a sunny morning (3S5). Dan is cousins with the crop dusters.
I was REALLY surprised at how big those planes are, 43'-52' wingspan! 650 HP turbo prop! 500 gallon tanks integral in the fuselage, just forward of the cockpit.
Mike Schiffer showed us the spray bars, pellet droppers, etc. He invented a hopper (he's a mechanical engineer, his brother is an aeronautical engineer) to carry tiny flakes of plastic with pheromones laminated in, to distract male gypsy moths so they search for females but don't find'em.
Took off into a clear, blue sky and overflew Sleepy Hollow State Park where my late wife used to enjoy fishing. It's abut a 50 acre lake made by damming up a small stream. Campsites and all.
A few horse farms had racing sulkies out. Green winter wheat, blue water, no clouds (or bumpy air), and a nice lunch afterwards with friends. A good day.

[catfish]

jack got to ask what do the males do if they don,t find the females? good thing i found my bride 30yrs ago or i guess i would still be hunting too. yea i used too know an old crop duster that did some for my brother. gota say they aint scared or the one i knew wasn,t.

[tx river rat]

Those green fields and plowed fields will give you a bumpy ride when it warms up a little more
Ron

[Wannabe]

Jack,
Sounded like a wonderful day. Brought back some memories. During rice season When I was in High School I worked for a crop dusting service cept they did not use dust. My first day on the job I showed up for work without any gloves. That day another guy and I put two tractor trailer loads of sacked fertilizer in the hoppers of crop dusters. When I got home that night I was too tired to eat. With no gloves my fingers were without any fingerprint ridges. Felt wierd. I unloaded trucks until a flagging spot opened up and I started flagging. Running to a field as hard as you could trying to get there and set up before the airplane ( Stearman with a 985 450 HP engine swinging a 9 ft constant speed propeller). Sloshing around in mud and water up to your knees. Doing a St. Vitas Dance when stepping on a cottonmouth known to some as a rattle mouth cotton mosican. Killid a bunch of em.Get up early enough to get to work and be in the field by first light and a few times flag at night with flashlights. No Nav. lights on the planes. The only way you knew where they were was when you could see the exhust flame. $1.25 per hour. Thought I was in tall cotton.Finally graduated into the spray crew and pretty well stayed dry after that. Killing weeds in rice and brush in pasture land. Never did miss having every square inch of my body covered in mosquitoes. Always had a bandanna for my face and goggles that would seal around my eyes to keep the little buggers out. No body flaggs anymore. All the planes use GPS and work a lot cheaper than flaggers did.
Glad you had a fun day Jack.
Bob

[Kayak Jack]

Catfish, I don't really know, but I guess they go off in a dark corner somewhere? Ron - you're right about the bumps. I watch for vultures riding thermals and try to miss them by a wide margin. Bob, sounds like good job as a first job for a boy. Everything is uphill from there.
A few murky days here, then some clear weather again. Will be up scouting for sabre toothed tigers, Apaches, and Russian MIGs.

[islandpiper]

Didn't you ever buy a box of Moth Balls? Where did you think they came from? Moths get really big in Michigan. Piper

[Kayak Jack]

Thursday, Mary and I were out flying again, kicking bushes and counting the geezers running around. We went to Howell (Livingston County Field KOZW) first. A good friend of mine, Jim Tafralian runs and FBO there. He has videos of guys in Texas strafing wild hogs in sugar beet fields. They were door gunners in a chopper that looked something like a Huey.

Then we went to a sod strip near Williamston, Maidens Field (89Y). John Maidens who owns it, has three airplanes in his basement. He's building a Pietenpol Camper - open cockpit bi-winger from the 20's. It was designed to be powered by a Ford Model A engine. We had coffee there, and John talked with Mary for about an hour.

Finally, we returned home to Mason Jewett Field (KTEW), refueled, put the Ruptured Duck to bed, washed bugs off the wings and wind screen, and went to town for lunch.

No record of spotting any sabre toothed tigers or Apaches. Successful in dodging one, Russian MiG,

Over and out.

[islandpiper]

How long before Mary starts working on her ticket? piper

[Kayak Jack]

How long before Mary starts working on her ticket? piper

I don't think that will happen. She's got her hands full helping with the transponder, watching for other aircraft, guessing weather, and raising and lowering the hangar door (it's electric). She's also pretty good at Geezer Palavering.

[Paddlin'Gator]

Jack, try to avoid what just happened to another friend. After not flying for at least a couple of decades, he decided to get back into it and for some reason chose to get a tail dragger, having had no previous experience in one. He found a beautiful PA-18 SuperCub about three months ago. Well, late last week he had some sort of incident while landing on a grass strip and ended up with the aircraft upside down and possibly totaled. He and his passenger are okay, although he has a severely bruised ego . He hasn't yet explained what went wrong. I'm wondering if he was doing a crosswind slip landing that went awry, or possibly the passenger obstructed the pilot's full control of the pedals and stick. I have flown in the back seat of that plane and found it was a challenge avoid that, especially the stick, and I'm not a large person. There are some real advantages to tricycle gear if you know how to do a soft field landing.

Joe

[Kayak Jack]

Hi, Joe. I can screw up my crosswind landings even without anyone to help. Hard to say, if he isn't talking. May not have held ailerons into the wind; may have ground looped; may have applied brakes so hard he upended (difficult on sod because of less traction); may have hit a hole; may just not have been his day to fly.

If he was used to making soft-field landings in a tricycle gear, he may have been holding nose high from old habit, and then maybe over corrected. God knows I make mistakes on almost every landing. Happily, S/He's not telling the FAA that news.

A couple friends of mine have sod fields near here. I land at one (wide open, except wires at E'ly end), but not the other - too tight a runway for me. It's an uphill/downhill runway. I think he takes off down hill and lands uphill, no matter what the wind is doing. I drive past it on the way to the field where I'm hangared, so I'll just drive in to see him.