November 22, 2008 1:04 PM
Always carry a camera, you will never know what you will get to take a picture of.

A few years back, I had flown to one of my customers about 100 miles away to spray in the trusty old Snow.
After putting out my first load, I lit for another. My runway was a narrow county road about 2 feet wider than the tires. This had been ok in the past because the road was the same height as the adjoining field, but now some ingenious county road crew had crowned the road and made barrow pits on each side. As I lit, I noticed that it had rained a little the night before and the road was a little slick. No problems were encountered tho, so I loaded up and took another load out. Upon returning, a little crosswind had developed, and this time, as I slowed down, I realized I didn’t have enough braking to keep the plane straight and just as I came to a stop, it slid off in the barrow pit. Getting out and looking at it from a little distance away, it looked like a helluva predicament, but actually the wing had just barely touched the ground on the other side of the barrow pit, the wheel was down in the ditch, and the tail was in the air, but the nose was still high enough that the prop hadn’t hit anything.
Since my Nurse truck was parked in some pretty soft ground full of water, chemical and gas and had a weak engine, I knew I couldn’t use it, so I set off walking to a tractor that was parked about ¾ miles away.
As luck would have it the battery was low, so I walked back to the truck, took the battery out of it and lugged it back down to the tractor. Being a diesel, it still wouldn’t start, so I set off walking to the farmers house about 3 miles away. He was gone so I borrowed one of his pickups, went back and pulled the airplane out. I went back to spraying, but since about 3 hours had elapsed all the good was gone out of the morning and I only got one more load off before the wind got too strong. (by now the road had dried thoroughly.)
At the time it wasn’t very funny, but looking back now, I sure wish I had a picture of that airplane sitting in the barrow pit.

Another time, when I was foolish enough to think I was gonna be a ground sprayer, I was using my sprayer to edge fields with Roundup so I wouldn’t have to get so close with the airplane. Anyway, I was taking a load to the field (about 20 miles away), when one of the back wheels came off my sprayer. It promptly drug me across the dirt road and into the borrow pit on the other side of the road. Again, another one of those helluva wreck looking predicaments with the nose down in the barrow pit and the ass end sticking up . Luckily no spillage, but it was about 4 miles to the nearest farm which I walked to , got him to come out and hoist me up with his farmhand and we put the spare wheel on. Sure wish I had a picture of that cause it was my last load in a ground rig. I promptly turned around, drove back to the airport. Pumped the load into my airplane and went out and sprayed it. Never got back in a ground rig since, but I sure wish I had a picture of it.

One time I had a camera and shouldn’t have, I was helping my Dad hitch up a team of horses to the wagon, when one of them decided to throw a fit and wound up upside down right next to the other one who was hitched up properly. Instead of doing something constructive, I ran and grabbed a camera and took a picture of it. Got my butt chew out but it was kinda funny afterward.

So don’t forget the camera, you’ll laugh about it years later
Brian

Was flying a Conquest II enroute from Morganton, NC to Chicago-Dupage a couple months ago. TCAS picked up converging traffic from 11:00 position and 1,000' above. It was Air Force One, went right over the top of us, close enough to read the numbers on the tail. Another good one recently would've been a simultaneous parallel ILS with a heavy Boeing going into SFO. Pretty much like flying formation. I'll try to add my favorite to the gallery, 47,000' over Montana on a nice clear morning. You can see the curvature of the earth.

I usually go south to sit the summer out on a fire contract. This year I took our Pacer, was a slow trip down with strong winds and a dust storm the first half of the days fly.

Had to get to 8500 to get a view forward and the head wind was a bit strong.


You can't really see the size difference but the one on the left's load is around four and a half full gross Pacers! Slight difference in handling too.

look for the gold at the end of the rainbow.

some awesome pics
...speaking of the gallery, I just wanted to put it out there, that I have still not got around to "bridging" the forum to the gallery . What that means is that if you want to post pics in the gallery, you will have to create a username / password there as well. It can be the same username and password that you use in the forum, and it would actually make life easier if you did do it that way, so that when I get around to bridging the two everything transitions smoothly...

take care, Rob