Night Flying

Having been an ag-pilot or "cropduster" for many years, I met many different types of pilots and ag-operators. Some good people, some bad, some honest and some dishonest, some smart, some dumb - in other words, much like the general population. 

Then there were the odd ball types that would not fit in any category. It seems to me that this type of flying attracted more than our share of this sort. I would place Shorty Biggers in this group.  When we would go to a café for breakfast, lunch or dinner (supper if you prefer) he always ordered fried chicken.

No bread, no salad, no anything else - just fried chicken. He would clean the bones and then pile them up beside his plate.  A bit odd wouldn’t you say?

Then there was Slick Callahan. I guess he was called Slick because he always wet his hair in the morning and slicked it straight back. Slick was absolutely sure that he was the best ag-pilot that ever climbed in an airplane. Whatever was to be done he could do it better than anyone and no doubt about it. We worked for the same operator in North Idaho for one season and then it struck James that he ought to start his own business. He bought an ag-plane and other equipment and set up shop near a small town in south Idaho.

Night Flying

Now in this area most of the ag-type flying was done at night. That’s right, at night. There was a reason for this insanity. You see most of the crops in this part of the world were "Seed Crops," meaning the crops were raised just for the seeds. Now I am not talking about wheat, rye, barley, or oats, the usual seed crops.  I’m talking turnips, carrots, onions, cabbages, parsnips and other vegetables type crops. To make good seeds the crops had to be pollinated. The best pollinator for this purpose was a creature called a "leaf-cutter" bee. 

These bees like most bees did their beesness during the daylight hours - from first light in the morning until dark-thirty in the evening. The seed-crop farmer had to import these little critters and they were very expensive.  Some said worth a dollar or more each. Consequently, the seed-crop farmers made bee-boards by drilling hundreds of small holes in a 4" X 6" around four feet long, fasten these together and placed them all over his fields as homes for his bees.  Yes sir, he took very good care of his bees and he sure did not want them harmed in anyway, especially by cropduster-types spraying insecticide. 

However, his vegetables had to be sprayed every so often for other types of predatory insects that would attack and devour his precious turnips, carrots, cabbages, onions and other stuff. This posed a problem. So, the solution was to have the ag-type flyers do their insect killing spraying at night when his dang leaf-cutting pollinating little worker bees were all at home and asleep in their cozy little holes in the bee-boards. 

My friend and fellow aviator Slick Callahan (his real name was James) called me one fine day and he sayeth unto me, "Roberts, I need for you to come down here and work for me. The pay is good, the food is excellent, the flying at night is fun, and I’m sure you will like it."

Well gullible and broke that I happened to be at the time, I packed my carpet-bag and appeared at his door forthwith.

James showed me around and introduced me to his ground crew and the CallAir-type aeroplane I would be flying.  The plane was modified somewhat for night flying, such as having large one-million-candle-power light under each wing with the light beam directed straight ahead.  On each wing tip was a smaller light attached at an angle which helped to make a turn at low altitude safer by directing the beam toward the ground. On the control stick in the cockpit was a cluster of switches that controlled theses lights. The forward lights were powerful enough to light up the area in the path of the plane for at least a half mile. 

His ground crew included two female women-types for flagmen, or should I say flagwomen.  These persons carried a strong flashlight and when the pilot was lining up for swath at low altitude they would shine their lights directly at him. It all sounded like it was well planned and might even work.
"You are going to love this type of flying," he repeated over and over. "The air is lots smoother at night. You’ll have the whole sky to yourself. No one to complain about your low flying 'cause they can't see you - heh heh heh. You don’t have to worry about killing someone's bees. Yeah, yer gonna love it."

So, after being briefed on the operation James took me on a tour during the daylight hours of the fields I would be spraying during the following nights. So began my career as a night flying ag-pilot.

Night Flying Newbie

I don’t mind telling that I was a bit nervous as I loaded up my plane and took off into the pitch-black night. First off, I was a stranger to the area and it took me some time just to find the field that I was to spray. As I climbed up to about three or four hundred feet and looked around there were lights everywhere. Every farm house, every chicken house, every barn, every vehicle had lights.

I had to fly around for half an hour looking for those two flag-women with what I thought would be strong lights. Finally, I spotted lights that were blinking on and off and realized it was the women standing at each end of the target field. Their flash lights were not strong at all. They looked like tiny little pin lights. Nevertheless, I lined up on them and swooped into the field for my first swath. As lined up I hit the button that turned on my flood lights.

Now these lights were definitely powerful. They lit things up for at least a half mile which was about the length of the field. I made my first pass pulled up at the end of the field, clicked off my flood lights, clicked on the right-hand wingtip light as I turned forty-five degrees to the right. 

I could see the ground on the right side just fine. I rolled to the left to make my turnaround as I clicked off the right-hand light and clicked on the left-hand tip light.  Bringing the plane around I saw my flagwomen flashing their lights at me. I lined up and clicked off the wingtip light and clicked on my flood lights. I made another pass and then repeated the operation until this field was covered with a coating of insecticide and by George, I didn’t kill any of the danged leaf-cutters.

As I made the last swath and headed back to the strip I could not find it. I wandered around in the darkness thinking, "Slick, ma frien, I'm not enjoying this here night flying very much."

Finally, I spotted the strip with the help of the loading crewman. He flashed his truck lights on and off till I noticed him. After a few trips I began to feel slightly more confident and soon fell into the usual routine familiar to all ag-pilots.  Back and forth, to and fro, up and down. I worked for about eight hours and headed back to the home base which I had a bit of trouble finding among all those blasted lights. 

One other item I need to mention was the fact that I had a CB radio in the cockpit and was in contact with my boss who was driving around in his pickup talking to farmers and hustling up business. This was the time of the advent of CB (Citizens Band) radio when radio contact with common folks was a novel thing, especially between truckers and other types who were always chattering away in their peculiar lingo. It was "Hey, good buddy what's yer twenty?  Have we got a clear shot with no smoky bears to worry about? Are yew my front door or back door? I’m nearing Denver town, good buddy. Jabber jabber jabber."

Bossman James had picked up this stupid lingo and it was, "How’s it goin' good buddy? What’s yer twenty, good buddy.  I’ll see you at the strip good buddy. Etc etc." James was a talker and talk he did to the point I want to tell him to "Shut the h--- up, Good buddy!!"  But he was my boss, so I didn't.

Night Flying Problems

Anyways, I eventually I was able to find my way around at night and was beginning to get comfortable in the CallAir, but I found I could not sleep during the day. Most every evening I went to work very sleepy. Not good. 

I also found that I could not see power lines very well at night. I would be down in the field with an altitude of three or four feet, doing about one hundred and twenty miles per hour approaching a power line at the opposite end of the field. It was danged difficult to tell just when to pull up to clear the line. One time I would pull up convinced I was close enough only to find I was still some distance from the power line. The next time I would pull up and just miss hitting the line by  inches. A real heart stopper.  Actually I could see the lines alright because they were shiny reflecting my flood lights but my depth perception was not very consistent. NOT GOOD.

Another problem I encountered that was not only irksome but dangerous - I felt I needed to go out to the fields that I was to spray and look them over in the day time noting any and all obstructions such as trees, posts, power lines telephone lines etc. Then at night I was familiar with the location and there would not be any last-minute surprises. After I had been on the job for a few weeks I would be working a field that I had surveyed in daylight hours. Bossman James would be on the ground visiting with the owner of the field. He would call me on the radio and say, "Hey good buddy, the farmer is here with me and has decided he would have you do another field nearby while you were here." Which would be fine in day time, but I had not looked that field over the day before. I didn't like to fall into a field that I had not had a chance to look over and I had complained to him several times about this.  He assured me he would always let me know if there were any obstructions. 

Another irritation was a mechanical one. On occasion when I would be entering a field I would click the button on my stick to turn on the flood lights and the blasted lights didn’t come on. It was like diving into a black pit expecting it to be lit up and I was totally blind. My reaction was to quickly pull up while frantically punching the danged button. The lights usually came on after a half dozen tries.  But in those few seconds of blindness at low altitude all sorts of things could happen and all of them bad. The same goes for the wingtip lights. Especially scary on a cloudy night with no moon or starlight and no visual horizon.

When I got back to the landing strip I would heatedly express my opinion of the lights switches. James would work the electrical gadgets over and it would work fine for a while but then it would happen again.

I was getting weary of these adrenaline rushes and began to talk about quitting this insane aviation stuff at night.  James would talk me out of it, saying, "Aw, you will get used to it and you will like it better than daylight flying."

Night Flying Adventure

Then one night I was working a field and good buddy James put me in another nearby patch of vegetables. He said, "The only obstruction is an electrical line running down the east side fence and a cattle feeder pen at the south end, but it is not very close."

"O.K.," I growled, "but I don’t like it."

I decide I would start to work on the east side next to the fence and the power line and that way I would be working further away with each pass. I made my first pass going north just fine. Pulled up and turned around came back into the field going south toward the feeder pens. About half way across the field my eye caught the glint of a power line directly over me, running the same direction as I was going. I saw that the line going down the east side did not go straight down that side but after a few yards along that side it angled across the corner of the field and went into the middle of the feeder pens. I suddenly realized I had gone under that wire on my first pass without even seeing it!!!

 Now I was under it going the same direction. In a fraction of a second, I knew if I pulled up I would become entangled with that wire and it would drag me down into those pens. I was too low to the ground to bank to either side without the wing tip hitting the ground.  My only chance was to hit the rudder hard and make a skidding change of direction to the right side, which I did. 

The feeder pens were coming up fast as I stood up on the rudder pedal and hoped to high heaven that I would pass out from under the wire with room to pull up over the feeder pens. Around the perimeter of the pens were several tall poles with lights on them. In a flash I got out from under the wire and missed the feeder pen fence and sailed between the tall poles missing the overhead wire, the fence and the poles just by inches. 

I leveled off shaking so badly I could hardly keep my feet on the rudder pedals. My heart was pounding hard. I thought I could hear it over the roar of the engine. I shut off the spray boom, headed toward the home base and called my boss.  “HEY GOOD BUDDIE, I AM HEADED FOR THE HOME STRIP AND I WANT YOU TO BE THERE WITH MY FINAL PAYCHECK IN YOUR GOOD BUDDIE HAND."

James happened to see the whole thing and it scared him too. When he arrived back at the base he took one look at me and didn’t even try to talk me out of quitting 'cause he was afraid if he said anything he might get punched in his good buddie chops.

So ended my night flying career. I just wasn't cut out fer 'at sort of flyin'. And seeing as to how I had to sleep sometime I just as soon it be at night.

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!

Don't Meet in the Middle

I was working for Arrow Aviation, east of Lewiston, Idaho, applying dry fertilizer to winter wheat. About 2 miles away on another make-shift air strip two of my friends were doing the same thing for a competitor.

I guess I should change the names to protect the guilty. One friend was Fats Hughes and the other was named Germania Gene.

When flying on dry fertilizer it only takes a few minutes to apply a full load of fertilizer if the field you are fertilizing is close by. So it was this day for my friends. As one pilot was out applying his load to the field, the other one was on the ground being loaded. As soon as the load was pumped into the plane on the ground, the pilot quickly swung the plane around and headed down the strip for a takeoff. Shortly after he was airborne he would head for the field being treated and usually pass the other plane returning for his next load. 

Nothing complicated about this, most crop-dusting crews did this regularly. Generally, you would hit the ground about every 15 or 20 minutes. Very monotonous. Up and down, back and forth, get a load, takeoff, fly it on the field and return for the next load, all day long.

The strip that my friends were working off was located in the middle of a pea field. It had a sizeable hump in the middle so much so that when you started your takeoff run you could not see the opposite end of the strip until you topped this hump. Still, it was a smooth strip and the hump presented no problem to experienced pilots. 

You started your takeoff going up-hill, you topped the hill and started downhill and were soon airborne. Same thing in reverse when landing. It was a steady rhythm. 

For some reason, Fats Hughes had a problem and came back to the strip early. He landed on the down-hill side of the hump. Germania Gene didn’t see Fats land. He received his load, swung around, and poured on the coals to the old Pratt Whitney and went roaring up-hill for his takeoff. 

You guessed it. They met at the top of the hump. 

Fortunately, each was off center of the strip, each was a little to his right. They passed each other and sheared off the upper and lower wings on the left side of both Stearman biplanes. Gene said they passed close enough that he could have reached out and slapped Fats as he went by.

Of course, they filled the air with the debris of chopped up airplane wings. Gene, who was taking off, had up a head of steam as they collided. His plane was going fast and before he could shut it down, it careened around to the left, making an wide circular path out through the pea field, and headed back toward Fat’s plane. 

Fats’s plane slewed around, went off the strip, and quickly came to a stop. Whereupon Fats, seeing the other plane circling and coming back in his direction, bailed out and started running. 

Later he explained, "Well, h***, he made one pass at me and I shore wasn’t gonna sit there and let him make another one." 

Fats was a tobacco-chewing feller and said it was enough to make him swaller his chaw!

Fog vs the Bossman

Back around 1963 or so, I was flying for American Dusting Company of Chickasha, Oklahoma. My unit was based in the town of Pecan Gap Texas. Pecan Gap consisted of a small restaurant, a service station, a feed store and about fifteen private residences. The town was surrounded by thousands of acres of cotton fields. 

My airport was owned and operated by a man named Weldon Briscoe who was also my boss. The landing strip was in the middle of his 160-acre place. Being a carpenter in the off season Briscoe asked me to build a hanger for him, which I did. It was large enough to hanger two planes - both Stearman biplanes that were once military trainers and had been converted to ag aircraft.

For the benefit of the unlearned, commercial aircraft, even crop-duster types, have to be inspected every 100 hours of flying time by a federal authorized mechanic. To get this inspection each time I reached one hundred hours, I had to fly to Chickasha where American had their headquarters and did all the maintenance on the planes.

One morning Boss Briscoe said, "Roberts, your time is up. Take the plane to headquarters and get the danged inspection."  Whereupon I looked all around and observed that there was pretty heavy fog enveloping us. Briscoe allowed that we were located only a few miles from the Red River, and fog forms along the river at this time of year. "If you can take off, you will be out of the fog very shortly since it just hangs along the river area."

The fog wasn’t very thick, I noticed, because I could see the big red ball of the early morning sun through the fog.

So I mounted my trusty steed and, keeping my eye on that big red ball, departed for Oklahoma. Sure enough, I soon came out of the ground-hugging layers of fog and viola! It was a beautiful clear day on top of the fog. 

I continued to climb, thinking if I got high enough I could probably see that the fog was just local. I climbed and climbed and climbed. At ten thousand feet all I could see in all directions was the brilliantly white cottony fog; no holes, no openings anywhere.

I wasn’t too worried though, I figured I would take up a heading to Chickasha and no doubt would leave the fog behind after a bit. As I said, it was a beautiful spring morning and I was enjoying the flight thinking how lucky I was to be flying on such a glorious day. 

I flew for about an hour and very slowly two thing began to crowd into my consciousness. One, the fog was not any local thing at all and two, my fuel gauge was getting nearer and nearer to the empty point. The fuel tank located in the top wing of the biplane directly in the middle of the center-section. The fuel gauge was a glass tube attached to the bottom of the tank directly in front of my eyes. It was placed there for a reason.

This airplane was originally designed for a 225 hp Lycoming engine which consumed about 10 or 12 gallons per hour. The tank held about 46 gallons of fuel which would give one about three and a half hours of flight. But...when the plane was converted to crop-dusting configuration a 450 hp Pratt Whitney engine was added. This engine burned about 20 gallons of fuel per hour of flight, meaning I only had about 30 more minutes of flight before I ran out of fuel. 

Still no sign of the ground anywhere. I became alarmed and began to make desperate plans.

I decided I would have to go down through the fog. I would slow the plane to the slowest speed that it would fly and still have control, and take whatever came, be it good or bad. Just before I did this suddenly I saw a small hole in the white layer below me.

As I circled the hole I could see the ground and there was a strange pattern on the earth. I could not imagine what it was. Whatever it was, I was about to find out. 

I rolled into a tight turn and cut my engine back, beginning a corkscrew descent into this cloudy well of an opening. Nearer and nearer came the ground. When the altimeter showed that I was only about a hundred or so feet above the surface suddenly - I was in the clear. Thank God, there was a clear space between the bottom of the fog and the earth! 

The strange pattern I had seen was a fish hatchery. It was a small lake with dikes running parallel across it, spaced about twenty feet apart. I had not remembered this landmark though I had flown this way several times in the past.

Of course, I rolled out of my tight turn into level flight and stopped my descent. However, I was still as lost as a goose. I took up a heading to the northwest anyway and figured, "At least I can land in a pasture or field."  

Then I suddenly came to a highway. "That is where I will put this flying machine down," I determined. I turned so I was flying along parallel to the pavement, expecting to hear the engine stop any moment. Then up came a sign that said "Duncan 10 miles." This was going to be my first fuel stop. Within minutes I was on the runway and taxing into the gas pit.

I pull up to the fuel pump and shut the engine down. Needless to say I was a bit sweaty. The small airport fuel boy came sauntering out and looked at me and then up at the low ceiling, shook his head and said "What in God’s name are you doing flying in this stuff?" I wondered the same thing.

The gas boy filled my tank and it took 45 1/2 gallons. As I said, the tank was a 46 gallon tank. 

Moral: I was stupid for taking off in the fog no matter what the bossman sez.

High Wind

There are times when an agricultural pilot must make instant decisions. Sometimes he makes the right decision and sometimes it is definitely the wrong decision. These quick wrong choices can result in bad stuff happening. Here is an example of a quick wrong decision.

I was working for an ag-operator in the state of Washington. The owner, whom I will call Watkins, was a pilot himself. He would take a hired hand with him in his Cub-type aircraft and fly out to a field that was to be fertilized. He would land in the field if it was not muddy and they would then walk to each end and commence to flag for the planes that were sprinkling the dry fertilizer pellets on the field.

The terrain was not at all level but more like rolling hills and swales. Watkins had parked his plane on top of one of these smooth rolling hills. He walked about 150 yards to his end of the field and began waving his flag. While this operation was going on as planned, suddenly a weather frontal boundary struck. The wind switched to the north and began to blow with increasing velocity. 

Watkins could see his Cub on the next small hill as the wind rocked it, making it bounce rather more than was safe. Watkins dropped his flag and began making tracks to his plane. He was a short man, maybe five foot five or six and a little on the beefy side in weight. As he was running and puffing toward the plane, the wind was rapidly increasing. When he finally reached it, the ship was actually leaving the ground with each big puff. He had set the parking brake before he left so he quickly set the throttle and went to the front of the plane to swing the propeller to start the engine.

The engine started on the first swing and he ran around to the right side of the Cub to climb in. Just as he was climbing in, the wind made a mighty blast and the little plane left the ground. He was half in and half out when he made the quick decision to grab the throttle and open it, hoping it would help stabilize the airborne machine. 

The reverse happened. With the high wind and the thrust of the engine the plane rose straight up vertically and then suddenly fell over on it’s back - kerblam! 

Watkins was thrown out on the wing which was now lying upside down on the ground. Somehow he landed on his feet. Both feet burst through the fabric covering.

When the other pilots doing the fertilizer flew over and saw he wasn’t injured, they burst out in gales of wild laughter. Watkins stood there knee deep in his upside down airplane, shaking his fist at them. He couldn’t hear the laughter but he could see the grins on their faces.

Stealth Cropdusters

Many years ago I was employed by an ag-flying company or as some would call it, an agricultural-air application company, based in Oklahoma called "American Dusting Company."  It was quite a large company with dozens of planes and pilots, one of the largest in the U.S. The company divided its planes and pilots up into units of two, three, or more. Each unit had a manager and these units were scattered all over the southwest. The main base and maintenance shop was in Chickasaw, Oklahoma. I became acquainted with many of the pilots during the three years that I flew for American.

Of course all pilots have flying stories: Some true, some true but "embellished," and some out-right LIES. One of the true ones I shall pass along because I thought it very interesting. This story I believe to be authentic because it came to me from several different sources and they all told the same tale.

Back in the middle 20th century there was an outbreak of a certain kind of beetle that infested very large areas of forests of the northeastern states of the U.S. A group of companies got their heads together and made plans to gather up as many ag-planes and pilots as they could lay hands on and get them organized and attack the devilish little creatures that were doing great damage to the forests.

The word went out all across the fruited plains of agricultural America that there was much money to be made by this armada of bug-fighting flyers. American Dusting Company was contacted and agreed to send six of their choice birdmen to join this effort. This detachment was to be led by one of the owners, Mr. Bob Smith (not his real name), who was a former Lt. Colonel in the U.S. Air Force and was still a member of the reserve.

The planes to be sent were PT 17 Stearmans converted to ag-plane configuration, including a 450 hp Pratt Whitney engine. I might also add that none were equipped with a full panel of flight instruments, just the bare bones of a primary panel which had a magnetic compass, an altimeter, an airspeed indicator and engine instruments such as RPM gauge, manifold pressure gauge, oil pressure gauge and possibly a engine temperature gauge. If you were lucky some of these still worked. At cruise speed the Pratt Whitney burned around 20 gallons an hour and the gas tank held 46 gallons, which gave approximately two hours of safe flying between refills.

Plans were made, routes were selected, bags were packed, and one fine morning the intrepid gaggle of beetle battlers left Chickasaw for the great state of Maine. Oh, did I mention - the planes had no radios for communication. All would be following their fearless leader Mr. Bob. Oh, and did I also mention - the planes had no running lights or any other kind of lights either.

Of course many fuel stops were made along the way which made for slow progress across the country. Nevertheless they made their way without mishap to the state of Maine where weather began to be a factor. It was getting late in the day and the overcast was getting lower and lower. Their next gas stop was a small town airport. The pilots began to get uneasy because dark was fast approaching. Eventually the only way they could see each other was by keeping in sight of the long blue blaze of flame from the exhaust pipe. Of course they were over strange country and one could not even see their maps. They were just following Mr. Bob, who was reading his map by flash light.

Then when it seemed that disaster was steadily gaining on them they saw some very strong lights on the horizon. As they got nearer they could make out that it was runway lights at an airport. Each pilot was thinking, "I don’t care what Mr. Bob or any of the other pilots do, I am going to land at this airport, come hell or high water."

And so they did.

One by one, Mr. Bob and all the pilots landed on the big, wide, long runway and breathed a sigh of relief as they taxied into a tie-down area on one side of the field. It seemed there was a airport terminal on one side and what appeared to be a military base on the other side. Anyway, they all got out of their planes and were laughing and congratulating themselves on their good fortune as they strolled inside the terminal building.

When they entered the building the clerks behind the desk looked at them in surprise and then all hell broke loose, as one pilot told me later. A clerk picked up a telephone and they noticed he was wearing an Air Force uniform. 

Within minutes a military vehicle pulled up to the door and half a dozen soldiers with submachine guns came charging into the room. They were quickly hustled into an adjoining room, searched and told to stand against a wall. Of course this was all a big surprise and they could not imagine what was going on. Mr. Bob approached the officer in charge of the soldiers and demanded an explanation. When the officer heard that Mr. Bob was a reserve officer in Air Force his attitude immediately changed.

The officer explained that this was a SAC (Strategic Air Command) base and on this night they were on a practice high alert. Suddenly it all came clear. This group of cropdusters had inadvertently stumbled in to a bad situation. The base was on alert and yet six low-flying aircraft with no lights had managed to land unseen on the base. They were flying too low for the radar to pick them up. They had taxied in the dark to a tie-down area, parked their planes and entered the terminal - all totally unseen until the a clerk saw them and wondered what the sam hill was going on.

The men at the base knew that General Curtis Lemay, who was the overall commander of the Strategic Air Command, many times did such things as this to test the base’s security operations. They were sure this was another of those tests.

It took a lot of explaining but finally the officer in charge of security became convinced that it was just a weird happenstance. However, he knew that if the story got out that a flight of six airplanes had snuck into his base without detection, his job would be on the line. His main aim was to prevent this. 

Consequently he had the unlucky cropdusters placed in a military truck and escorted under guard to a hotel where they spent the night. No one was allowed to talk to them. The next morning they were returned to the airbase and their planes were fueled. The officer in charge said, "Now, you boys get in your planes and get the h--- out of here and DO NOT SAY A WORD ABOUT THIS TO ANYONE OR I WILL HAVE YOU UP ON MORE CHARGES THAN YOU CAN POSSIBLY IMAGINE."

The American Dusting company pilots did as ordered and that was pretty much the end of the story, as far as the Air Force was concerned. The pilots proceeded on to New Brunswick and fought blister rust beetles until the outbreak was under control.

But there's no way a story like that can be kept completely secret. One of the pilots in this group was a friend I knew well and he was the first to tell me, under a request of secrecy of course. I've honored his request and changed the names to protect the "guilty."

Wires

When aerial crop dusting and spraying first began to be widely accepted by farmers, there were no airplanes designed for this purpose. Consequently the earlier cropdusting airplanes were highly modified planes designed for other purposes such as passenger ships, cargo ships, training planes, mail carriers, and military planes etc.

Prior to the Second World War there was very little aerial application of dust and chemicals to crops. A cropduster pilot had the whole sky pretty much to himself since all other aircraft were scarce and flying high above the earth. His greatest concerns were to keep his ship on an even keel on the proper heading, maintaining his altitude of a few feet above the crop, keeping his propeller turning in the right directions and being careful not to collide with obstacles on the ground. 

These obstacles came in all shapes and sizes: trees, posts, buildings, farm equipment, towers of various kinds, vehicles, and last but not least, telephone and electrical lines and poles. In the earlier days these power and telephone lines were not so plentiful, so were of little concern. As time passed, the cropdusting planes became bigger and better and more numerous and so did the power lines. That is the subject of my present dissertation.

Wire Hazards
By the time I entered the scene these blasted lines were everywhere. Along the roads, highways, railroads, canals and fields of croplands. Some fields were bordered on all sides with these wires and many times they ran across the field at various angles. 

The size or thickness of these wires varied - a thin telephone wire the diameter of a pencil lead to huge cables with a diameter of an inch or more. Also there were brace-cables often called guy wires attached to the power line poles and towers. The size or thickness of these was usually about a half inch or so - strong enough lift a truck or tractor.

I believe that lines were the ag pilot’s most pervasive headache. One of the first things a new ag pilot had to learn was how to fly along, around, amongst and under these devilish and sometime lethal wires. A field that had multiple wires across was generally referred to by ag pilots as a wire-orchard. No matter how large an overhead cable might be, ag pilots called them “wires.”

I lost several friends and a brother because of an encounter with these wretched wires. My first mishap involving a wire happened in a cotton field in East Texas. I was still young but had two seasons under my belt and up to now had no wire problems. So I felt I was a fine ag pilot. 

I was flying a newly rebuilt Stearman with a 450 hp. Pratt-Whitney up front. It had been a long day beginning at first light and now the sun had dropped below the horizon. I was spraying bug control chemical on a field of cotton, making my runs across the field going north and south, back and forth. A power line ran across the south end of the field leaving me just enough space to fly under it. Beginning on the east side I worked my way, swath by swath across the field until I only lacked about five or six more swath to finish the field. It was getting close to dusky-dark and I was hurrying to finish the field before it got too dark to see.

I was flying south and approaching the power line that I had been flying under with no problem. When I reached a point too close to pull up and go over the line I suddenly spotted ahead of me -directly in my flight path - two old fence post protruding about two feet above the cotton. It was too late to pull up and go over the line but I didn’t want to hit those sturdy looking posts. I had a split second to make up my mind. I lifted the plane up about two feet above the posts and Wham! My upper wing struck the lower power line. 

In a flash the line broke first at the nearest pole on my right and the loose end in a fraction of a second wrapped itself around the N strut between the upper and lower wings on the right side - and hung on. It stretched the line on the left side till it too broke. That end of the broken wire on the left side then whipped completely around the rear of the plane and then came forward striking the back of my crash-helmet. Sounding like a rifle shot, it whipped on forward smashing my windshield. 

All that happened in the blink of an eye. I pulled up quickly. Looking the plane over I saw nothing was damaged except the shattered windshield. I was carrying a length of wire tied fast to the right-hand N strut and draped over the rear of the fuselage just ahead of the vertical rudder fin. 

I headed for the base and landed in the dim light just before dark. It had been a long hard day with a hair raising ending. I pulled into the hanger and shut the Pratt-Whitney down. Leaning back with a sigh I finally relaxed. I thanked the Lord for his protection. If that wire had struck my helmet three inches lower it would have taken my head off.

My boss, Mr. Weldon Briscoe, walked out and saw the prop spinner was messed up and a long piece of power line draped around the plane. I figured I was about to get a real chewing out because after all it was a new airplane. He looked at me and then the windshield and made a sort of whistling sound through his teeth. I could tell he wasn’t all that pleased but all he said was, "Son, you cut it pretty darn close. Just don’t make a habit of it. Next time you may not be so lucky."

During my 35 years of chasing the bugs I tore down enough wire that one of my employers said with a worried look on his face. "Roberts I do believe you are going to run the power companies out of wire if you don’t hang yourself first."

The Never-Fail Turbo-Prop

Aircraft engines made a radical change with the advent of the turbo-prop engine. The old engines were classified as reciprocating engines, similar to what we have in automobiles. The turbo-prop engine worked completely differently. It had a small turbine as the power generating source, similar to a jet engine, except the turbine turned a propeller. These new engines were smaller, lighter, had more horsepower and were supposedly much more reliable.

We ag-pilots were anxious to try one of these new-fangled engines because with the light weight and extra power we could increase the "payload" and thereby do more work in a given time. Plus we liked that the engines were said to be much less likely to fail.

My first opportunity to fly an ag-plane with this type of power plant came when I hired out to an ag-operator located in the Gulf Coast. It was in rice growing country near the small town of Katy, Texas.  

Before I was cleared to aviate with a turbo-prop at the pointy end of the airplane, the insurance company insisted that I be sent to school so as to know how to handle this here highly complicated and tremenjusly complex apparatus. Even though I had years and years of experience and thousands and thousands of hours flying back and forth over the vegetables, it made no difference to them. 

So they sent me to Hartford, Connecticuty, where the Pratt-Whitney Aircraft Co. had a school for beginners to be learnt about these jet fuel burning engines. I spent a week in classrooms listening to some young, self-important individual spout off, displaying his vast knowledge of turbo-prop aircraft engine. Mostly his talk was giving high praise of the reliability of the PT6-E turbo-prop engine. He assured us that our days of engine failure were over. THIS ENGINE DOES NOT FAIL. IT WILL GO 6000 HRS BETWEEN OVERHAULS. THIS ENGINE DOES NOT FAIL.

I came back to Katy with about the same amount of knowledge that I left with, except I knew that the turbo-prop engine DID NOT FAIL. Yeah, I had that phrase ringing in my ears. Me and my partner went to work and I was enjoying flying with the comforting new knowledge that there would be no more flight interruptions due to engine failure. I had launched myself into the future of ag-aviation feeling safe and secure. 

About the third week and somewhere around 80 hours on the new engine, I was working off a dirt strip surrounded by rice fields - some dry, some flooded. I had a hopper full of liquid fertilizer, about 300 gallons as I recall. I had just broken ground when I noticed that a couple of puffs of smoke came out the exhaust pipe on the left side. 

At the next instant I noted that my engine rpm was decreasing and I could feel the loss of power. I reached the end of the strip and slapped the dump gate lever open and the load was dumped instantaneously. Lighter of wing, I swung the Ag-Cat out to the right with the intention of making a 180-degree turn to the left and landing back on my landing strip. Nothing around me looked favorable for an emergency landing.

The engine continued to lose power (a new word - "unspooling" it was called). About half-way around the turn I realized I wasn’t going to make it. I leveled the wings and prepared to make contact with a newly plowed rice field. I sat it down as smoothly as possible and held the stick back so hard that the tail wheel touched first. As soon as the weight of the Ag-Cat settled on to the main landing gear, the wheels quickly sank into the soft powdery dirt of the recently plowed field. Up came the tail and down went the new engine into the soft dirt and over the plane went on its back. I slammed down hard upside down. Thankfully, the Ag-Cat being a bi-plane, the upper wing held the fuselage off the ground high enough that the cockpit enclosure wasn’t crushed.

It is very disconcerting to find oneself upside down even though strapped securely in the seat. Believe it or not the danged engine was still running. Of course the prop was not turning. The blades were bent back at a 90 degree angle. But since in this particular type engine there was no mechanical connection between the power section and the propeller, the turbine was still going. How strange. 

I had to shut it down. I unbuckled my seat harness and as I had done at other times, fell on my head. I managed to open the exit window/door and wiggle out on to the powdery earth. I wasn’t injured in any way, but my poor engine didn’t fare so well. Black smoke began to issue forth because the oil in the engine was draining into the hot combustion chamber. There wasn’t much chance of a fire,but it did put up a nice plume of black smoke. I had to hand it to the Pratt-Whitney person who said the engine didn’t fail. Even after it had quit producing power, it was still running!

To make a long involved story shorter, the Pratt-Whitney Co. sent a tech-rep out to collect the engine and take it back to some place in Canada where they analyzed it and pronounced the cause of the engine failure was fuel contamination. Sure, sure. Fuel contamination is the only thing that wasn’t covered in the warranty.

Whatever the cause, it ruined my day and demolished my confidence in turbo-prop engines. My conclusion was that any mechanical contraption can fail PERIOD! 

Someone who saw the plane go down and start smoking called the fire department who then called for ambulances. And along the way a crowd collected of (I'm guessing) newscasters, TV reporters, environmentalists, save-the-whales folks, vegetarians, a couple of couple of local preachers, a pair of politicians, and the county sheriff.

Fortunately, there was a farmhouse nearby. I walked over there and even though I was a bit dirty, they welcomed me in, gave me a cup of coffee and a piece of fresh baked pie, and promised not to tell a soul where I was. I managed to hide out until my boss came looking for me. How he found me, I don’t know. 

Here is a picture of my dead AG-Cat lying on its back with its feet in the air... but as you will notice, I am not in it.

Barnyard Landing

One day I left the landing strip with a full load on board this old battered and beat-up Stearman. I was flying about the average ferry altitude of a couple of hundred feet, headed out to spray a field of cotton. The tired old engine made a muffled cough, backfired and quit cold. 

 Now a loaded Stearman without power has a glide angle like a brick with a feather tied to it. Within 10 or 12 seconds I was on the ground. I didn’t even have time to turn parallel with the furrows. I hit the hard dry dirt doing about 85 mph across the furrows of a newly harvested maize field. Bumpity, bumpity bumptiy, enough to rattle your teeth. It seems that the engine had decided it didn’t like the impure fuel we were using.

Not all my flight interruptions were caused by engine problems though. Sometimes there were other causes. About four days later while flying for the same operator near small town of Brownfield, Texas I took off at dawn and headed for my assigned field when I noticed the tips of my propeller was making little contrail rings. 

It was early fall. We had had a cool air mass move in the night before and this was a warning that temperature and dew-point were getting too close together, but I figured I would at least have time to get my load out. 

I arrived at my field and made several passes across it when fog began to form around me. I thought, "Uh-oh, I had better get this bag of rags on the ground pretty soon."  I pulled up and headed back to the strip, but before I got there I found fog banks closing in on me all around. 

I saw a newly mowed alfalfa field directly in front of me. I quickly decided to put the plane on the ground - and just in time. Before I could bring her to a stop I entered a thick fog bank. I rolled to a stop and I kicked the tail around.

As I peered into the mist I discovered that I had stopped about 15 feet from a small barn or tool shed. I shut the engine down and just as I did so a back door on the shed flew open and a Mexican hired hand stepped out. When he saw me his eyes bugged out and he threw the hoe he was carrying up in the air and lit out like the devil was after him. I had to laugh but can’t say as I blamed him. Who would expect to step out of the barn and suddenly see this big biplane rolling toward you out of the fog?

I was very pleased to be on the ground. Eventually I was able to hitch a ride with a passing farmer and he took me back to my base. 

When I walked in, my bosses eyes got as big as the Mexican’s and he said, "Roberts, this is the second time within week you have returned without you airplane." He was vastly relieved to learn that his plane wasn’t damaged and admitted, "I’m pleased though that you are on the ground and not on top of this pea soup milling around up there looking for some place to land."

Buzzing the Kids

Comical incidents occur in most occupations, with possible exceptions such as brain surgery. Here is one I remember well. 

The cropdusting season finished in late fall. Then I was sent to a large ranch in deep East Texas to do some grass seeding by air. This ranch consisted of several thousands of acres with huge areas covered with mixture of large timber. The owner had decided to have the timber removed in order to make more grass land, thereby supporting larger herds of cattle. 

The method chosen was to have the R.G. Letourneau Company bring in some extremely large machines designed to drive through the timber, pushing it down and crushing it. Then I was to fly over the flattened trees, some as much as four feet thick at the trunk, and sprinkle grass seed over the whole mess. The plan was then to wait until fall when the grass has grown up, matured, and dried. It was then set afire. The dry grass acted as a fusing agent. The ground was thus cleared for next spring’s crop to take over and make for fine grazing. A plumb scientific plan, I suppose.

So I set up shop in the middle of the ranch on a dirt strip with my lil ole Stearman and several truck loads of grass seed. Big chunks of the ranch had already been de-treed so to speak when I arrived. A dirt strip had been graded out for me set to work on the west side of the target pasture. 

I began flinging seed over all the downed timber. Of course there was no place to land - and I mean none - if the old wore-out Lycoming surplus engine decided to stop and rest awhile. Like the ole saw has it, that prop up front is like a fan. If it stops running the pilot will shorenuff start to sweat.

Nevertheless, all went well and after a couple of days I had worked my way across half of the acreage. I was monotonously flying back and forth three swaths, and land for the next load, three swaths and land, three swaths and land.

One morning I noticed an old sort of dilapidated farm house sitting back in the timber on the north side of the pasture I was working. At first I thought it was abandoned. But as I worked, each swath brought me closer to the old house and I noticed it had a rail-type fence around it and there were children playing in the yard. I remembered it was a non-school day so they were at home. 

As I got closer I noticed that the kids were up on the fence waving at me as I went by. It must have been a large family or, for all I know, more than one family because there were about ten kids of all sizes from three year-olds to a couple of girls that looked to be teenagers. It reminded me of my own childhood. If a plane flew by fairly low we children would wave at it and sometime the pilot would see us and wobble his wings to answer the greeting. This was a great thrill for me as a kid so I returned the wave to the kids with a wing waggle.

As each swath took me closer it became obvious that the next pass would take me directly over the house and kids on the fence. I decide I would give the kids a little extra thrill. I had been maintaining about thirty-five to forty feet of altitude and as I approached the house on the pass that would take me over them, I tipped the nose of the plane down a bit and opened the throttle for a good buzz job.

When those kids saw the plane coming down toward them there was a scene of pure bedlam. They came off that fence and went in all directions like a flushed flock of quail.

Some flew under the porch, some went up a nearby tree, some sailed around the house, some went in the screen door. One of the older girls grabbed a small child in each hand and headed for that same screen door but it slammed before she got there and she ran smack into it with the kids in hand.

I had no idea that it would cause such a panic, but it was a hilarious explosion of kids and I burst out laughing. On my next pass believe it or not every last one of them was back on the fence waving and laughing. I gave them a big wing waggle and an arm wave and headed back to the strip. I love kids. I guess that is the reason I have five of my own.

Have Luggage, Will Spray

To appropriate the often over-used intro - "Long ago and far away" - I was employed as an ag-pilot for a company in the state of Idaho. Our spraying season in that area was about over so I was loaned out to another company. This company was located in Washington state and their season was a month or two later than ours.

The company had more work than they could handle and had asked for help. This sort of thing was nothing unusual. It was common practice for that time and place. The thinking was that it was better to call in outside help than to lose a customer because you were not able to give prompt service. After all, the little bugs were chomping their way through the farmer’s crop and farmers had to have some spraying done right away or lose a goodly chunk of their crop.

My boss told me to take one of our Ag-Cat spray planes and head for central Washington. He said, “You had best pack your bag because you may be there for a week or two.”

My destination landing strip was located on a farm near Royal City, Washington, and I arrived at the strip about mid-afternoon. There were several planes already working off the strip. I landed and as I pulled up to the loading area, I was met by a supervisor who motioned me to the loading pit. He climbed up on the wing walk and said, “We’re running behind. Are you ready to go to work?”

I answered, “Yes, as soon as my plane is fueled, and you tell me where to go, and what the crop is, and what the application rate will be.”

He quickly gave the ground crew instructions to fuel my plane and pump my hopper full of chemical as he gave me directions as to where the field was and what the application rate was. I was hardly on the ground half an hour until I was ready to go to work. I taxied to the strip, shoved the throttle forward, and was on my way. Boy that was quick!

I found the field and flew over it, looking for obstructions. Finding none, I made a pass down the downwind side of the field. I made a turn around and was in the middle of the second pass when I noticed that the boom pressure gauge was not registering the proper pressure. It was too low. Also, the chemical was not coming out of the nozzles in the usual nice little plumes. I adjusted the boom pressure valve to a much higher setting than usual and made more passes. This change didn’t seem to make any difference the pressure was still too low.

I pulled up and returned to the landing strip with about a third of the chemical still in the hopper. I landed and had the ground crew check the boom, the nozzles, and the wind-driven pump to see if they could find anything wrong with it. They couldn’t find a thing that was malfunctioning.

The supervisor, thinking maybe the lines to the boom were plugged up or some such thing, told me to take off and fly over to an area that was nothing but wasteland and dump the rest of the chemical out so we could examine the inside of the hopper. I did as he said. I pushed the dump lever to the open position and the chemical was dumped, but it didn’t flow out very fast. Then I pulled back on the dump lever to close the dump gate at the bottom of the hopper and for some strange reason it was stuck in the open position.

I returned to the strip and landed. As I taxied up to the loading area and shut the engine down, one of the ground crew ducked down under the belly of the plane and hollered, “There’s something hanging out of the dump gate. Looks like an old boot.”

It suddenly hit me like a thunder-clap!

I had completely forgotten that I had packed my battered old suitcase and stowed it in the hopper because this particular plane had no baggage compartment. This was not an unusual practice. We ag-pilots often did this when traveling. Unfortunately, this time the suitcase had somehow come open and disgorged its contents when the hopper was filled with chemical. All my traveling stuff was spilled into the hopper and was sucked into the dispersal equipment, thereby partially plugging things up, doncha know. So now all my clothes, boots, shaving kit and other possibles were thoroughly soaked in insecticide.

Shamefaced, I opened the hopper and dragged out what was left of my suitcase. The supervisor looked at me with profound disgust and swore. I was never more embarrassed in my entire life as the ground crew gathered round and laughed their guts out. Pretty soon the grim and angry supervisor couldn’t help himself and joined them in their laughter.

We cleaned up the mess and I climbed back in the plane, loaded up and finished the day. Of course, most of my traveling stuff was ruined and I had to wear the same clothes until I had a chance to go into town and buy some new gear.

Well sir, it took years to live that episode down. All my flying compadres heard about it and never let me forget it. Even years later one of the stinkin’ donkeys would needle, “Dale, have you washed yore linen in insecticide lately? Haw haw haw.”

“Shut yer stupid mouth you misbegotten imp of satan!”