In My Opinion

This is a topic that I have touched on in a previous IMO, but I am inspired to expand and expound on the subject; and the subject is “Wannabees” ag pilots. Recently while flying in Illinois for Mr. Chuck Holzwarth, he and I briefly discussed some of what it takes...

I was fifteen years old and had my driver’s license for three, maybe four months. It was summertime, 1955. I was a loader boy for Mr. Jimmy MacPherson (Jimmy Mac) owner of Mac’s Flying Service, a crop dusting service, not an aerial application business. We were located at Huggins Corner...

This little essay is a pilot preference thing and truly and in every sense of the word, an “opinion-type” dissertation, mine! It seems to me, after almost many years teaching my turbine transition course with Flying Tiger Aviation, most ag pilots attending my course prefer to make wheel-type landings, as...

IN MY OPINION, this little dissertation is a mild case of venting for me, as well as other ag pilots who have expressed similar feelings. It is also mildly sarcastic. For AgAir Update readers, I have “cleaned” it up considerably (use your imagination). Over the years that I have been...

Pilots sometimes get the wrong idea when it comes to medication use. One of the most frequent questions we get at the Office of Aerospace Medicine is; Why don’t you have a list of approved and disqualifying medications? There are actually a few reasons why such a list is problematic...

You know, it’s easy to stand on the outside of the fence and criticize someone else. That's a cheap shot. But if you've "been there and done that, and got a T-shirt to prove it", you may be a little more entitled to say things. I have been there and...

This is a topic that we at Flying Tiger Aviation harp on to the point that it’s just a matter of time before someone shouts, “That’s enough already… I’ve got the point!” And the point is (drum roll please)…ferry at 500 feet AGL! During the last week of June 2003,...

One day I was working off my airstrip on Mr. Sidney Clark’s place, spraying W.P. Robinson’s cotton about two miles south of Duck Hill. I was flying an east-west racetrack pattern and in my pull-ups on the west end, I was turning over a house on a hill. Being on...