Mountainside topdressing in NZ in a PAC Cresco (nee Fletcher)

[Garfly]

Some amazing flying - similar to a normal day in the office for our own Student Pilot (who'll surely get signed-off one of these days ;- )

 

 

 

 

One comment on YouTube:

 2 days ago  duece191:  This is some fancy flying dude! There are more events in two loads than I've had in 14000hrs worth of an airline career! Hats off to you!

Edited July 14, 2021 by Garfly

[skippydiesel]

What a pilot - What an aircraft (ugly though).

 

So much to do and he still manages to carry on a relaxed instructional monologue - AMAZING!

[Garfly]

Ha, ha ... and draw red circles on the windscreen at the same time..  

(By the way, that ain't ugly, just, ummm ... agricultural.  ;- )

[Garfly]

Another one in the series:

 

 

[Student Pilot]

Some nice flying there Captain Gazza

[skippydiesel]

1 hour ago, Garfly said:

Ha, ha ... and draw red circles on the windscreen at the same time..  

(By the way, that ain't ugly, just, ummm ... agricultural.  ;- )

All in the eye of the beholder

[Thruster88]

At work we maintain some of the early model Fletcher FU24-950 with 400hp lycoming IO-720 engines. They have flown around 20,000 hours each. Despite being in close proximity to corrosive fertilizers and landing every five minutes they are in great shape, good design and good maintenance, there has to be some beauty there. Originally designed by John Thorpe.

[rgmwa]

He makes it look easy. I spent some time watching one of these in action on the North Island a few years ago. It takes a lot of skill fly one of these in that hilly country.

[facthunter]

Little room for error in many places. Don't think you'd want much wind to complicate things. Nev

[RossK]

I like his pro tip of flying over the top of the power poles, don't have to look for the wires then.

 

I'll remember that next time I'm doing a low level canyon run 😲 😬 🤐

[IBob]

Just nipped out in the garden and took a pic of our most-used local strip, 2.3km away.

The super bin is silhouetted at the top right against the trees on the hilltop. The strip comes down very steeply to the left of there, then less steeply towards it's lower end: only the steep upper part, coming towards the camera,  is clear in this pic.

This strip sees a huge amount of use each summer. Mostly what they are putting on is lime, to address a deficiency.

A couple of summers ago they must have been working close in, and I timed them at 2minute turnarounds, wheels off to wheels off.

They work very long days when weather permits.

And it is dangerous: more so than forestry, which otherwise tops the list here.

[kgwilson]

I had a small farmlet in NZ surrounded by hill country farms west of a town called Ngaruawahia (try to pronounce that!) and my neighbour had several strips on his farm all uphill landing & downhill takeoff with a tight turnaround at the top. I managed to scrounge a ride once and was terrified and amazed at the same time. The strip not far from my neighbours house could be seen from their kitchen window & both takeoffs and landings were done flying under some 110 kV high tension power lines. There was plenty of clearance as they are strung across a valley which was the approach but when you are heading towards them at 100 knots close to the ground it does not fill you with confidence. Each topdressing run was only 3 or 4 minutes.

 

The skill of these topdressing pilots is legendary.  The FU 24s Fletchers were built at Pacific Aerospace at Hamilton Airport, NZ & the Cresco turbine was developed from that. Before the advent of the Cresco one of the topdressing companies called Robertson Air Services installed Chev V8 engines in a couple of them. I don't think they were very successful. Without a load the Cresco was something to behold with its power and incredible manoeuverability. The XL 750 was a development from the Cresco for meat bombing. The Cresco ceased production in 2006 but recently they have announced the Cresco 2 which is unchanged except for some new Pilot safety and comfort features

[kgwilson]

The comment about his accent was pretty funny & it wouldn't surprise me if he was wearing Jandals either.

[IBob]

When I came to NZ in the '70s they were using DC3s and Beavers. I was fortunate to go with a friend a couple of times in a Beaver, had another session booked but he rung me and told me not to come out.

Weather no good, I asked, nope, he said, I just wrote her off.

The strip that day was along a ridge top,  he had missed his line on takeoff and gone off the side with insufficient speed.

You could see where he started to dump the load, but the reality is the super doesn't come out that fast: imagine sand pouring out of a hole in the bottom of a bucket, it takes time.
You could see where the L undercarriage hit and tore off. Then the gouges made by the prop, with the RH undercarriage a little further on. The rest was in a fence at the bottom of the gully.

The Beaver fuel tank is in the belly, so lucky it didn't burn.
Back up on the ridge, you could easily see how it might happen: the land appeared to fall away just about equally on all sides, with no clear indicator of the line. Apparently they would normally follow the wheel marks of the arrival landing, but that morning there had been no dew and the ground was dry.

 

I never did manage to go topdressing in a DC3, but I once begged a ride in the copilot seat from Napier to Taupo, and it remains one of the most enjoyable and memorable flights of my life.

[Old Koreelah]

My question for that pilot (spoken in an Aussie accent):

 

“With such a mundane day job, what do you do at the weekends to give yourself a bit of a challenge?”

[facthunter]

Having a turbo prop engine must take a load off their mind. That type of use wrecks an air cooled piston engine. Limit flying .. No room at all for error..Some types of super were notorious for clagging up and not dumping. Nev

[poteroo]

Turbines have been a saviour of both Ag and PNG GA flying. At a huge capital and operating cost though.  How we used to drool over the turbine PC6 Pilatus Porter back then.

 

 However, there are still plenty of ways to become a statistic: weather isn't any better, valleys no wider, hills no lower, more powerlines and hilltop aerials, and poor operating choices continue to be made.  

 

On the downside for light aircraft ops, avgas availability  has become such that pilots are tempted to re-route via intermediate stops, or, overload the aircraft to give range. On the plus side, avionics are a world better, and mobile phones have changed communication for the very much better.

 

In respect of the aggie video which began this thread, I can say that I've never flown with a 'poor' Kiwi aggie yet.  Everyone of them has been very skilled, and very professional.  

 

I thought that one reason for his not using landing flap might just be the amount of debris damage you'd incur with a nosewheel type, (holding the nosewheel up in tail low attitude), as compared to wheeling a taildragger on, ( where full flap was kept higher off surface during the higher speed segment of the landing rollout).

[Garfly]

Another one ...

 

 

 

[IBob]

Oh, that's excellent: I lovvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvve those off the edge takeoffs....................)

[IBob]

3 hours ago, poteroo said:

I thought that one reason for his not using landing flap might just be the amount of debris damage you'd incur with a nosewheel type, (holding the nosewheel up in tail low attitude), as compared to wheeling a taildragger on, ( where full flap was kept higher off surface during the higher speed segment of the landing rollout).

 

I believe the turbine also allows them to make a faster approach, then put the prop into beta on touchdown if required: that's certainly how they put down at the airfield at the end of the day.
Then many strips are sloping, so the speed washes off quickly once on the ground, and it's not unusual to be applying power again to get the aircraft back up to the loader.

[Old Koreelah]

Bent wings are best!

[IBob]

8 hours ago, Old Koreelah said:

Bent wings are best!

Someone told me that the original design was intended for crop spraying (liquid, rather than solids), but that the wing did not lay down a good wet pattern, which is how it came to be sold on to the NZ manufacturer. I don't know if this is true.

There was also the story of someone who picked up several of these aircraft for next to nothing:
Some of these pilots used to travel the world with the seasons, perhaps they still do...wheat crops in the UK, then down to the cotton in the Nile delta and so on. The story went that one of the Arab countries had bought several Fletchers, a local pilot had killed himself in one, and the remaining local pilots then refused to fly them. So they were parked near the end of a runway, and about to be bulldozed during runway widening/extensions when a visiting pilot offered to take them away instead.............

[Old Koreelah]

I’ve been searching for some evidence that John Thorpe was influenced by the Jodel wing.

Couldn’t find any, but discovered that he designed the Fletcher as a light attack aircraft. Another of those designs that adapted well to another function. 
 

I love the bent wings for a number of reasons, one of which is that you can side slip until almost on the plurry deck!

[Student Pilot]

The Fletcher was designed as a topdressing aircraft for NZ. In my humble opinion the best machine (With it's derivatives) for the job. John Thorpe also had a big hand in the Piper series aircraft, full flying tailplane and similar design to the Flitch. Turbines have made a big difference to AG work. But as usual if you give an AG aircraft more power the hopper size goes up till the advantage gained is negated. The Dromader is an example, 2500 litre hopper for bulky products like seed and some fert. They stuck a turbine on it and blew the hopper out to over 3000 litres then filled it with retardant for fire work. Not only that with the radial you were working at around 100 kts, the VNE is (from foggy memory) 125 kts. With the turbine they were cruising at 145+ kts and spraying cotton at 130 kts, little wonder the wings fell off.

If I had a choice between turbine and radial (if earning capability didn't come into it) I would choose a radial/piston. Every piston has quirks, an individual. Turbines seem to be bland, lots of power but bland. Switch them on and off. Pratt 985 or Lyc 720's all had personality, both at idle stirred the soul

[Student Pilot]

1 hour ago, IBob said:

Someone told me that the original design was intended for crop spraying (liquid, rather than solids), but that the wing did not lay down a good wet pattern, which is how it came to be sold on to the NZ manufacturer. I don't know if this is true.

There was also the story of someone who picked up several of these aircraft for next to nothing:
Some of these pilots used to travel the world with the seasons, perhaps they still do...wheat crops in the UK, then down to the cotton in the Nile delta and so on. The story went that one of the Arab countries had bought several Fletchers, a local pilot had killed himself in one, and the remaining local pilots then refused to fly them. So they were parked near the end of a runway, and about to be bulldozed during runway widening/extensions when a visiting pilot offered to take them away instead.............

The days of aerial spraying in England and pilots working in North Africa are long gone. Now Oz pilots go to North America in our winter season, I do a fire season here and now go to Canada for 5 months in our winter.  The US and Canada never have enough pilots, except maybe this year where the drought has decimated agriculture.

Col Pay or David Reid bought a few Fletchers from Pakistan. Tom Watson used to buy Beavers from all around the world.