Be alert

I got scared today but I don't have much of a lesson except to expect anything.

As I arrived at my hangar I noticed a turbine Air Tractor on a right base for runway 14L which is a left traffic runway. That seems par for the course and I don't understand how these guys get away with it continually.

The wind was very light but I taxied to runway 14L and radioed my intentions (I know, you guys in the big population centers don't believe in that). As I finished my runup on the narrow taxiway just off 14L I saw another Air Tractor taxiing toward me on runway 32R. Now I was very alert. Did this guy just back taxi for a 14L takeoff of what? It turns out he had landed on 32R with no radio calls and was now heading right for me. Now I am very very alert, having seen photos of what a big propeller can do to an RV.

At this point I figured he would would wait for me, on the runway, to get by him because the taxiway was way too small for the two of us. Nope, he turns on to the narrow taxiway while I am sitting at the hold line. At this point we are about two seconds from one of us charging out into the weeds or there is going to be a collision, and I am the one who is going to get hurt. I am yelling on the radio "Air Tractor, do you see the RV" repeatedly. Just as I was going for the throttle, he went for the weeds. I figured he noticed me at the last possible second before chewing me up.

Upon completion of my flight and refueling I went down to visit with the gentleman. I didn't have to get very close before he was saying, "Oh, are you the one with the cute little airplane?" Yep, that would be me. He apologized profusely, but said he had me in sight the whole time. He never did explain why he turned in to me then turned out off the pavement. I asked if "you guys have a radio in this thing?" "Yes, what is the frequency, 122.8?" Well no, it isn't but it doesn't matter if you are aren't using the radio anyway. He also said he was afraid he had cut me off in the air. I can understand why he thought he might have done that.

I was pretty stunned by the nonchalance.

Flying, driving, boating, jet ski, snowmobile, golfing; Everywhere you go you will find one.

Same type experience. . .

Several months ago- same lack of professionalism when 3 turbine dusters took over a small airport where I was doing some RV training at. No radio use, take off/landings alternating runways, very low approaches and landings from various non-traffic patterns, cut off final approaches, etc.

Similar type action from two airfields I frequent where skydiving schools are located. Both use old King Airs and are extremely non-standard specialists.

Heads up out there!

Unprofessionalism

OK, I confess, I'm an ag pilot. I fly a Weatherly 620B out of Ontario, OR Municipal airport. And yes, we have been known to fly non-standard patterns and entries. How do we get away with this? The answer is that we have an agreement written into our operating lease at the airport that allows us to. The requirements are that we must have and use a radio capable of Tx/Rx on the airport advisory freq and we must give way to any traffic in the established traffic pattern. It serves pretty well. Most of the local traffic is aware of our operations, and more often than not when we call an entry from whatever direction the guys in the pattern tell us to go ahead, they will extend. We don't expect them to do this, but quite often they do, and we are grateful. We are burning 30 gal. of avgas an hour ( the turbines more like 50 gal/hr ) and racing wind, or night or weeders or you name it, to get the work finished.

If I were working out of a strange airport, I would expect to have to make standard pattern entries and departures unless I had made other arrangements with the airport controlling authority.

All that said, rudeness can be found in pilots of ag planes, RVs, spam cans, helicopters, and probably even blimps. As I was typing this it occurred to me that this might be something I should bring up to the NAAA as a possible topic for a PAASS presentation. That is a 3 hour block of saftey training that is available to us each year at some point. One of the problems is that a lot of the time the unprofessional stuff you see from ag pilots is from people who are not members of NAAA, so a PAASS presentation won't reach them.

I apologize for the epic.

Model B (Limp) Pilots TOO??

Low & Slow said:

............ All that said, rudeness can be found in pilots of ag planes, RVs, spam cans, helicopters, and probably even blimps. .........

Click to expand...

No, PLEEEZE, tell me it ain't true..... I have never met a rude blimp pilot!

Your description sounds similar to flying out of an airport with "Fire Bombers" operating, except they pretty much fly standard or overhead patterns. We always give way to them, obviously.

It's always the few bad apples that give the rest of us a bad name, eh? GRRRR!

Be Alert

I too, am an Ag-Pilot. On top of that, he was my Pilot. We had a heart to heart this am on phone. I am a member of the TAAA, NMAAA, and yes, the NAAA. As a rule in the company, we always use the radio, and say our intentions. The pilot in question, works out of a private strip, and not used to talking on radio, no excuse. As for Firefighters, they are paid by the hour, we are not. As Low and Slow said, we only have a limited time to get our work done. I told him, if your radio does not work, fly the pattern. It is dangerous enough work by itself, should not make it more dangerous by not talking on radio. As a whole, the Ag Pilots have always been pictured as a bunch of country bumbkins, things like this do not help our image.

Brent Colvin said:

I too, am an Ag-Pilot. On top of that, he was my Pilot. We had a heart to heart this am on phone...

Click to expand...

Wow, this site and the people on it are amazing.

Thank you very much for what you did!

Brent - ag operators are some of the last vestiges of the barnstormer era. When visiting the in-laws I often watch an Ag-Cat applying over potato fields. My dreamer's mind leads me to thinking how I wished it was me in that cockpit... Thanks for chiming in with some of the realities of your world.

On another note... It doesn't do the ag application business any favours to have a beat-up looking airplane that still bears the ugly scratches and gounges of a wire strike. A local operator has a Pawnee in that condition and I've heard many folks comment that it looks like an airplane the Feds should be grounding. I guess professionalism works best when extended to all aspects of the business.

One of the best flights of my life was in an Ayres S2-R Turbo-Thrush with a very experienced ag pilot in the front seat. With nothing in the hopper that airplane was a very wild ride!

I used to work summers for ag pilots in Arizona. They operated off of the dirt roads adjacent to the fields. That was then. Nowadays if I see a ag aircraft I give it a wide berth. There are more pilots not using the radio than are. It is a huge safety issue. I don't why that more than 90% of ag pilots will NOT respond on the radio. That number is the number that I have seen in my area. On my way to OSH last year I got put in a high low squeeze while trying to land for gas in Illinois. They walked over laughing about it. Yeah, real funny.