An interesting video:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/5q5ADURTie0[/youtube]

What year did you film this story 1940? Then maybe your in a area I am not familiar with in another country besides the USA..

Along the same lines.... an interesting way to start a crop duster:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=40 ... =2&theater

That was my job when I was a kid, flagger.

ME TOO. In fact the guy I worked for for two summers in a row in the 1950'a gave me my first flight lessons.

I wonder if he ever got his fifty cents per acre and house on the beach.

My guess is around 1974. Look like jungle fatigues, hair cut...Stearmans still being used in the delta into the late 70s...

We last used Parathion about 1981 (?) not methyl or ethyl but 6-3.

I can't believe that his flagger would stand out there, maybe he moved upwind...? We used fixed flags, rectangular 40 acre fields in S.Florida. Haven't done any of it since 1984. AgTruck and 375Brave.

I would guess mid seventies, certainly sharpen up your flying skills, but life expectancy was short, I understand.

Hand swinging the stearman, with no chocks it looked like, brave...or just plain stupid

That was my reaction as well. He seemed mighty casual about swinging that prop!

Neither. Note how slowly it idles, once it's running, with closed throttle. Most Stearmans will do that, if properly tuned.

We used to have a cropduster come in for lunch and fuel in his 450HP Stearman in the fifties, when I was a lineboy. He'd let it idle, then shut it off with the mags, go eat, (watching it like a hawk), come back and sorta amble past the prop, never breaking stride, just casually reaching out and taking one blade along. Started every time, and you could count the blades and the combustion events while he got in.

My Bonanza would do the same thing. Low battery (once or twice), I'd crank the nosewheel hard over the left, a chock under the right main, prime it, THROTTLE CLOSED FULLY, and stand behind the prop on the right side, and flip it through. Usually started on the first blade, and came up to idle at 650 or so. I'd pull the chock and get in.

I'd check that the electrical system was working, and I'd run enough electrical components (landing lights) to keep the charging rate low (amps) to take it easy on the battery, and wouldn't do it there were low weather conditions for departure, but it worked.

This video was filmed in the early 70s in the Mississippi Delta, for a PBS documentary.

It really highlights how far our industry has evolved - professionally and technologically - since then.

I could see this pilot being my uncle during the same time period. However, my uncle was in the Oklahoma panhandle. One time, he didn't quite get over the wire - crashed and broke the prop. I think he said he had to walk several miles to get to the road and eventually someone picked him up.

I think he still has that old wooden prop.

John I respect your opinion but would disagree with you on this one. I am pretty used to hand swinging a prop, the Piper Cub I fly requires it, my Bo does not.

However, I used to own a De Havilland Chipmunk, and this would fire if you even looked at, particularly on a hot day. I took care when hand swinging that one.

I also had a YAK 50, huge paddle prop, and only once had to hand swing that, it was an interesting experience. I find that the larger the engine, big radials or pistons, and the higher the aircraft sits off the deck, then the more of a challenge it becomes. I would always chock an aeroplane when swinging it, too many fatalities and bad injuries have occurred whilst hand swinging propellers. IMHO.

That video brings back lots of memories. In 1960, when I was eleven, my dad bought a new Cessna 172 with three other fellows; $10,600. He also bought me a Sears Moped which I could ride out to the airport. Back then, Grenada was mostly an ag operation. Between spraying the ag pilots would fly with me, most weren't instructors, but who cared? Not me!!

They all flew Stearman. It was horribly dirty work for everyone, pilots, loaders, flagmen. Even the owners, the Christopher brothers, worked like dogs to keep those old airplanes flying. Most were flying with Continentals that were military surplus tank/landing craft engines. I can still remember the crates of those engines stacked three high in the hangar, pickled and waiting until needed.

The place and everyone reeked of the herbicides and insecticides. The poisons got on everything and the smell permeated the air. Most guys had to wash up with hoses before putting on clean clothes and going home.

Crashes were a regular event. Usually, with the Stearman, they were survivable. When the damn Pawnees came along in the late sixties, people started dying, usually from fires that came when the fiberglass, fuselage, fuel tanks cracked on impact. How did such a crappy, death trap of an airplane ever get certified.

The man that signed my hours off, soloed me, and sent me for my PPL in 1967, was a retired Air Force Colonel. He was the high school counselor in the off season and flew the ag planes in the summer. He died in a Pawnee in August of 1968 when he hung a wing during a low level turn going from one field to an adjacent one which lay at a 90 degree angle. Hardly got a scratch or burn from the fire, but getting out, he took a breath and seared his lungs, not bad, just enough. Five days later we buried him.

The rest of the pilots and the owners themselves, all eventually died from intestinal cancer. My best friend, Buddy, was the last of them. He died four years ago. I couldn't get him to go get a colonoscopy, no matter how I begged, until it was too late.

I too, would have probably done ag work in college. Thankfully, my mother said not just no, but hell no. She too was a pilot. It wasn't a feminine over reaction, just good judgement.

Jgreen

How on earth did he fly that thing, what with no glass panel, no auto-throttle, and NORDO to boot!


First thing I thought of was Petticoat Jumction and Hooterville.