Crop dusters and boozers
Pilot’s Logbook
When I first arrived in the RGV in ’79, it didn’t take long for me to discover what I really wanted to do: become a crop duster.
On my way to and from the Brownsville Airport, where I worked as a CFI and charter pilot, I’d see a duster, and I’d have to pull over to the side of the road just to watch him work. I’d stay parked on the side of the highway that led from Brownsville to Los Fresnos, where I was living at the time, for maybe about 15 or so minutes just watching the dusters swoop lower over an ag field, drop a load of pesticide, then haul back on the stick at the end of the field, point the nose skyward, bank 45 degrees to the right, do a 180, hard left rudder, and then drop low down low, just missing the utility wires, for a second pass over the field, 10 feet or so off the ground, and dump another load of pesticide on the next row of crops. Pure aerial ballet, that’s what the dusters did. I was in love with the trade.
Read the entire story on the e-Edition of our newspaper. http://www.etypeservices.com/Advance%20News%20JournalID455/