Tail Draggin' Tales: The Nefarious Pea-Killer

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

The Nefarious Pea-Killer

Many farmers had fields of peas alongside a field of wheat. They were always nervous when an ag-plane was spraying the wheat for weeds because the chemicals that were used to kill weeds in the wheat would also kill peas. If the wind happened to be blowing from the wheat field toward the pea field, the drifting over-spray could do a lot of damage to the peas.

One day my friend Buck Erickson was spraying a wheat field with a chemical, carbine, that would kill wild oats. Now carbine will not harm peas. The wheat field that Buck was spraying lay alongside a field of peas. The farmer who owned the pea field, thinking that Buck was applying the common weed killer called 24D, became concerned that the overspray would drift over on his peas.

Mr. Farmer ran out into his field of peas and began trying to wave Buck off. Of course, Buck paid him no mind because he knew the carbine wasn’t going to harm the peas. In desperation, the farmer ran back to his house to call the headquarters of the spray company that Buck worked for to tell them to stop him.

By sheer coincidence Buck accidently struck the telephone line which ran to the farmer’s house, cutting it down. The farmer was so enraged that he jumped in his pickup and raced to the airport to blast the company.

He stormed into the office and yelled that not only he could not wave the blanky-de-blank pilot off but the blanky-de-blank pilot cut his phone line down so he couldn’t call the office to stop him!

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About Dale

Having spent a good portion of my life driving aircraft of one sort and another, and at the urging of my progeny, I begin this blog. This is an attempt to record some of my more interesting little episodes just for grins and entertainment, most of which were caused by pilot error, pilot ignorance, pilot stupidity, pilot exhibitionism, and pilot in-over-his-head-isms.

I began my flying in the middle of the twentieth century when general aviation was trying to recover from the war years and trying to convince itself that aviation had a future. Piper, Cessna, Taylorcraft, Stinson, and a few other small aircraft manufacturer were struggling to stay afloat by offering some small, bare-bones, two-place, low- horsepower type flying machines at an affordable price.

There were quite a number of ex-military pilots around, but many of these types had flown in what was thought of as "Big Iron" aircraft and weren't much interested in the general aviation Piper Cub-type puddle jumpers, so they hung up their goggles and quit flying altogether.

Then there were those who were too young to participate in WWII, but were inspired by those brave men to learn to fly themselves. That groups includes me, and these are some of my "adventures."

What's A Tail-Dragger?

I have received several inquiries wanting to know what a tail-dragger is and why is it called that, so a brief explanation is in order.

Most airplanes nowadays, but not all, have what is referred to as tricycle landing gear. They have a wheel up front under the nose of the ship and two main landing gear a little further back. This arrangement makes it much much easier to steer on the ground.

Typically the earlier airplanes had the two main landing gear up near the front of the plane and a small wheel at the tail end. This is generally referred to as a conventional landing gear. This arrangement gives the appearance that the tail is actually dragging on the ground.

The term "tail-dragger" is a pilot's slangy term used to distinguish between the two types of landing gear. Because the center of gravity on the conventional-geared aircraft is behind the main gear, it is much less stable around the vertical axis and requires careful attention while on the ground.