Spray Pilots
Day 13, June 9, 1988, 6 p.m. Written in the AAR Pilot Lounge-Snooze Room that overlooks the runway at Will Rogers Airport, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where I’ll RON (remain overnight) tonight.
Yesterday began with an exciting formation flight - well, more like a small gaggle, really. The gaggle was arranged by my new friend, Kay Alley, a terrific lady King Air pilot who flies for “Angel Flight” a charitable air operation that takes sick children and their families where they need to go. Kay is yet another pilot introduced to me through Lee Spencer and his home-grown aviation journal. I did not fly with Kay, but we had lunch together and a tour of Flight Safety with one of her friends, Gerald Griggs, who instructs in Learjet simulators there. Kay made a lot of telephone calls the night before to line up some rides for me with friends of hers and she got the local TV news crews and newspaper reporters to come out as well.
Whenever reporters show up, a little more excitement is added and a few aviators flying their aeroplanes becomes an event. And what better place to host such a quickly-arranged event, than in Wichita, Kansas, the very town where Clyde Cessna, Lloyd Stearman, and Walter Beech came together in the 1930’s and employed thousands in the business of small aircraft manufacturing.
My first flight of the day was with Sid Tucker, who, in his light blue 1939 DeHavilland Tiger Moth, hopped us six miles over from Beech Factory Airport, (where I last landed yesterday), to Beech North Airfield, where we all came together. There were three other vintage aeroplanes waiting for us at Beech North, along with “King Air-Kay” and the TV and newspaper crews.
After Sid and I arrived, and the news crews interviewed everyone, we stood together and had a little pilot briefing to plan out the series and timings of our take-offs for the cameras. Our succession was to be as follows: In the lead was Sid, solo this time in his Tiger Moth; 2nd came a young stylish couple dressed in vintage aviation apparel that matched their 1930’s Pietenpol Air Camper – darnit, I missed getting their names; then Gerald Griggs and myself in his 1937 Aeronca K; a camera news helicopter; and one more…
The fifth in our gaggle, taking up the rear, was to be a 6'5" 290 lb. thirty-five year old, student pilot with an old Cessna 170 who told us during the pilot briefing, “A half of an hour ago I was lost over Wichita and just happened to land here at Beech North Airfield because it looked like an uncontrolled grass airfield where I couldn't get into too much trouble. Then, when I taxied up and saw the news crews waiting, I thought I was in real trouble!”
We invited him to join us in the fun, and help us put on a show for the TV cameras, so long as he kept his distance from the other planes, made a good take-off, and promised not to get lost again while following us. Somehow, I missed getting his name, but did get his picture. If anyone recognizes this guy, please call his wife and tell her he might still be on the ground in Wichita, needing a ride home.
Gerald and I lost sight of our other "formation" pilots and said goodbye to them over the radio during our westbound flight. We landed on yet another Wichita airport called, Riverside Airport, which in my opinion should be named, Riverside “Sidewalk” since the runway was barely wider than one.
Kay Alley caught up with Gerald and myself, met us on the ground there, and the three of us had lunch at a swanky, rustic place near the little airport. Afterwards, Gerald treated Kay and me to some Learjet simulator time at Flight Safety, Inc. In the back of my logbook, I logged .7 hours of simulator time and Gerald signed it with his CFI endorsement.
King Air Kay did well at the controls doing a couple of instrument approaches under the hood. When my turn came, I knew I'd be a lost cause flying instrument in the thing, so I asked Gerald if it was possible to fly it by visual references. With the press of a button, Voila! Looking out the windscreen beyond the packed panel of buttons, knobs, throttles and turbine temperature gauges, a nighttime runway lit up and looked so real and three-dimensional—I felt I could almost reach out and touch the lights as they went by my peripheral on take-off run. For 45 minutes I lasted, flying through transparent grain elevators and buzzing the farm silos, until I plowed us into the ground while attempting a 70-degree bank at 300 feet altitude and 300 knots airspeed. Suddenly, a jolt and all the blinky lights outside went to black. Best quarter I ever played! Okay, so maybe it wasn't exactly in keeping with the vintage aeroplane theme, but it was strictly a local flight, so I didn't break my rules.
By contrast, later that afternoon Gerald and I barely putted over the trees on takeoff from “Riversidewalk” Airport in his 65 horsepower antique Aeronca K. The weather was beautifully clear and sunny, but over the hundred degree mark. Heading south over flat farm country, the little fabric two-seater rode the updrafts and downdrafts like a fragile kite. No other aircraft I'd ever been in was so affected by the rising and lowering air currents as this one. I was flying the little bird the lazy way, with my right hand on my lap, and my left hand on the trim tab adjusting the up and down, while my feet on the rudders did the back and forth. Gerald said he was just
along for the ride.
It felt good up at altitude at a thousand feet or so, and the cooler air temperature on my skin reminded me that I was not watching the altimeter. It also brought my attention to the smooth, but definite elevator ride we were taking up four hundred feet, down five hundred, up three hundred, down two hundred. Unless I’m taking a flight test or giving instruction, I’m not that concerned with holding the altitude right on the money—I guess I too, was just along for the ride. And Gerald didn't seem to mind the numbers going up and down. He was off-duty from his Learjet training job.
It also didn't faze him in the least that I didn't have a destination in mind before we took off. We decided to head in the direction of Oklahoma City and choose a good drop-off point along the way. About three quarters of an hour into the flight, I pulled the air chart out of the seat pocket behind Gerald and opened it up. "Okay, where are we?" I asked.
"Right about here," he said, putting his finger down on a little town in northern Oklahoma called Renfrow. I studied the chart and noticed a familiar name of a town about twenty miles ahead.
"Pond Creek! It seems to me I got a letter from a man in Pond Creek inviting me to fly with him…" I dug my Rand McNally out of my bag and opened it up to Oklahoma. "Sure enough—Pond Creek!" I showed Gerald my map with a little blue sticker and the name "Kirk" written on it, next to the crossroads called Pond Creek. Thinking hard, I recalled that the letter was from a crop duster and pipeline pilot. "David Kirk. That's who that is. That would probably be a good place to land."
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Spray Pilots continued
"Okay," Gerald said. "Do you think the airport's got gas? I'm gonna need some to get back to Riverside."
"I don't know. Let's see what it looks like on the chart. I think it's just a little private dusting strip."
"Well that shouldn't be a problem. Any crop duster is bound to have gas to keep his planes tanked," Gerald stated.
On the air chart I located two unpaved airstrips on either side of the little town of Pond Creek. "Hmmm. I'm not sure which is the right one, but the one on the west side of town is called 'Pond Creek,' so let's fly over it and see if it looks like it's got gas."
As we approached the airfield, we could see a yellow Ag Cat sitting out by a fuel truck and three or four people near it. "This must be the right field—it looks like a lonely little duster strip," I said.
We landed and taxied up to the four men by the Ag Cat and shut down. The obvious spray pilot was standing straddled over the cockpit, pumping gas through a hose from the fuel truck into the top wing of the chalky yellow spray plane. He was handsome, blonde and tan, in his twenties, wearing faded blue jeans and a gas-spotted striped shirt. The other four guys looked like the official airport bums as they stood, shaded by the upper wing from the beating late afternoon sun, leaning over his lower yellow wing, just as if it was a bar in a saloon. The young pilot looked like their bartender they were telling their day to.
They all looked in our direction with smiles of curiosity as we taxied up to them after landing on the grass strip. Gerald and I climbed out of the little Aeronca. Holding up my map, I directed my question toward the pilot, who was still fueling his plane, "Are you David Kirk?"