Checking wells last night and this guy was flying corn. I have flown with them, drove with them, and even drank a adult beverage with them, but I have never seen anything like this guy. Spraying a small pivot. No go around just turn and burn. Almost inverted on the turns. True athlete as far as I’m concerned

Crop duster pilots are a special breed! They become one with their machine.

Chris

Yep....my father built his own dusters, souped them up like a Pitts. He would do similar stunts -he was a stunt pilot anyway.

Fun stuff to see and experience .

X2

They got to have a few loose screws to do that job!

Did you grow up in corn country or was he spraying wheat and grasshoppers out west?

I enjoy watching them work any chance I get. Always love when they fly between the power lines and the ground. I guess they don't have much further to hit the ground if something went wrong.

I would have loved to have been a pilot

WW2 vet sprayed around here long time ago. Legend has it when the freeway was being built he flew under the overpass.

Hammerhead stalls are the typical turn. Get to the end, climb straight up, loose all momentum b/c your not a rocket, start falling backwards, the engine end gets heavy so you dump your rudder to one side, let it flip around, facing down now, give'er all shes got, start pulling back on the stick, and now your pointed back down right where you left off, move over some, and make another pass. Yeee Haww.

What a ride !!

They are definitely half crazy, the ones that spray around home swing out and make a turn and then come back. Friend of mine used to work for a coop and he was hauling chemical down to the airport to refill the crop duster and said the pilot returned to be refilled he had a stall or two of corn in his landing gear. When my friend asked about it he shrugged and said sometimes you get a little low and it happens

Years ago here the crop duster was an old radial engine plane. I loved hearing that thing rumble over the fields and watch him do the stall turns. Now they fly the newer air tractors. Still neat to watch.

I'd ride with them once!

Always fun to watch!

Looks like he's been sniffing to much of the product. Seriously those folks are fun to watch.

Years ago, a crop duster in my area told me I should ride along with him sometime. I told him if I did it would take him a whole day to clean the puke out of the plane.

No not corn , but the variety of shorter sized crops grown in south FLA. Strawberries, Bell peppers, ochra, and orange , banana and mango groves. We would even fly up to Georgia and spray the peach groves. Meantime he was a stunt pilot , flew his own Pitts, worked on planes, built airboats and piloted them. Drove DC- 3's for transport supplies from FT Lauderdale to Grand Turk in British West Indies Isles on the side.

He always pushed machines beyond the manual limits...he said you can feel when to stress something, but not to breaking . Engines were in his blood.

I asked one back in the 60s if he ever hit anything. He said yes, about once per year his landing gear would hit a fence he hadn’t seen before. Said better to just hit it that to jerk upward and stall. I was dating his daughter a few times.