Cool Stearman footage and radial engine music.

One of my favorites...

That is very neat. Funny how he talks about getting sick, but still goes without gloves or PPE.

I feel for the flagman!

What year was that from?

lancef53 wrote:That is very neat. Funny how he talks about getting sick, but still goes without gloves or PPE.

I feel for the flagman!

What year was that from?

1970's.

The pilot was John Walton who died one of the richest men in the world, thanks to his inheritance, when his plane crashed.

I have no problem with what this boy is doing. If he was Sam Walton's boy, he probably could have leveraged a better plane. I had a $10,000 Stearman in the late 70s that had a bigger engine and held 200 gallons. There was a 4" metal lip on the top of the fiberglass hopper to get the extra. Hard to see out. The can he was pouring from was not labeled right, if it was Parathion. I think it was crop oil, which was used with Parathion on low volume government contracts on boll weevil. Pyrethrins were coming into usage but Parathion was still legal and cheaper. I expect he was doing his own thing on his own dime. He seemed to be doing a good job.

Rob, is the Boll Weevil Eradication Project still going on after all these years?

Boll Weevil is still going on, although I believe it's been 5 years since one has been found here on the Upper Gulf Coast in Texas. Cotton farmers still get charged $20/ac so the program can recoup losses from when the program was still very active, only the govt can get away with that kind of accounting. To the surprise of many, the program worked and the results have been very impressive.

I showed this video to a 2nd generation crop duster buddy of mine a while back. He used to go with his Dad to another crop duster's operation to visit from time to time, and the quiet, sincere, owner of the operation was occasionally there, usually sweeping out the hangar or making himself busy. Turns out that was Sam Walton's brother, he owned several operations throughout the south.

Ultra low volume with oil seemed to work OK, if flown on low. I sprayed Parathion on grasshoppers for some S. Colorado ranchers who complained about the high volume price for a quart of Parathion in a gallon of water per acre. The government job that had failed to kill the now large grasshoppers had been flown on with an old medium bomber five hundred feet up.