As if spraying crops isn't dangerous enough already, here's a headline from a few years back about a guy who was annoyed by the operations:

Don't shoot down the cropdusters!

Kenny was one of the guys that I attended high school with who got his pilot's license and then went on to gain his commercial and certified flight instructor (CFI) ratings.  He was the proprietor of our local grass-field airport and did seasonal crop dusting.  We used to do a lot of 'hangar-flying' on rainy days, telling each other of our latest escapades and adventures.  Just about all of that old bunch has gone their way now with only a few of us left.

Here's how one of our group met his demise...  Art Anderson.  Art was an electrical engineer who worked at the same plant as me at Delco Radio in Indiana.  He flew an Ercoupe out of our local field and was always there to help when the need arose.

Art took one of our GM-Delco FM car radios and converted it to 122.7 frequency, added a timer and some relays and gave it to Kenny for use at the airport.  We'd tune to Unicom, key the microphone five times and the runway lights would come on for five minutes - the last minute blinking to warn that the timer was preparing to shut them off.  Repeat the five key-ups and you'd have another five minutes if you missed your approach and had to go around again.

Of all the people to get murdered, we'd never have guessed that it'd have been Art.

Kenny flew Agcats, Stearmans and Wacos cropdusting, among other things.  Golly, there are a thousand stories of things that happened over the years.  The day that I traded the Jag for my second Stinson, I was out at the Municipal airport and I called Kenny to see if he'd come and check out my latest purchase.  He told me to meet him at the Howard County airport - (now closed and converted to a MIA military compound).

So when I landed and Kenny came walking out, I started to move over to the right seat.

"Stay there where you're at,  This is your airplane."

"But YOU'RE the pro-pilot so I'll give you the left seat."

"Don't be silly!  I flew with you BEFORE you could fly!  Besides, I've put in more hours in the right seat than you've had in the past year."

So I took us off and climbed to about 3,000.  Kenny said, "MY airplane." and took the controls.  He did a few maneuvers and told me, "Well, she flies okay and seems straight.  Let me show you how to get back onto the ground in a hurry."

So we flew back to Howard County and Kenny demonstrated from 1800' an extreme 'slip-to-landing' that took my breath away.  We dropped sideways all the way down and I was still looking out my side window at the rows of corn below us as we neared the approach.  He rolled level and yawed it straight just in time to flare into a perfect touchdown.  "You'd better get some more hours under your belt before you try that."  he told me.

Needless to say, I've never tried that.  :-)  A crop duster, I ain't!