Aug 052008
Took some shots of a cropduster buzzing around western Iowa yesterday. That seems like an entertaining job; at the very least a job where you’d best stay on your toes.
2 Responses to “Cropduster”
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In my twelve years of work as a weather observer/UNICOM operator out at KJMS I saw the remains of two of those things that had crashed.
Their props were wrapped into knots, but one pilot actually survived.
The new pilots just love the danger of the job, which is about the closest thing to barnstorming left in the US.
But the only _old_ pilot still left doing it I met was pretty careful about what he did.
He had a old Grumman Ag-Cat* biplane which looked for all the world like a 1930’s Navy dive bomber.
I never was able to talk him into letting me repaint it as a Curtiss SBC Helldiver or Boeing F4B4 off of the Lexington or Saratoga.
Boy, but it would have looked great like that!
BTW, they get really sensitive about people calling them “Cropdusters”.
They are “Agricultural Aircraft” nowadays. 🙂
Neat piece of trivia: how do you tell the last time a Ag-Cat’s engine has been overhauled? The central driveshaft housing of the radial engine is cast with a little forward-facing tube on it that has the internal diameter of a penny, and a wire tie-off at the forward end of that tube – crossing it at its greatest diameter.
Each time the engine gets fully overhauled, you stick a new penny from that year into the tube, and reseal the wire over it to keep it in place.
This is a concept that dates from the wonderful age of KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid!).
* Prehistoric looking fabric-covered aircraft, but apparently most effective even these days…check around the web for what turboprop powered ones look like.
Stewardess’ now demand that they be called “Flight Attendants” also.
New name… same cool sex fantasies. 🙂