ONe of these flew over my house several times

[OBIO]

Just a little while ago, I heard the sound of a low low low flying radial engined aircraft. And when I say low low low, I mean LOW LOW LOW....as in the plane was clearing the tops of the pine trees at the end of the house by only 40 feet. It was a Grumman AgCat....a nice yellow and white bi-plane with a beautiful radial engine exposed for all the world to see.

I grabbed my digital camera to take some pics, but was only able to get a couple as the sun was so bright that I could not see the stupid LCD screen on the back of my camera....and it doesn't have an eye viewer thiingiemajig. I turned my camera to video, hoping to record the sound of the plane flying nice and low at full power...and my freaking batteries went dead after the first couple passes. Ran back into the house to get new batteries and had to dig around in my paper/battery/crap drawer to find the AAs. Got the new batteries in and back outside in time to get a few more video recordings of the plane flying over.

We live just a few miles from KMFD, home of the 179th Air Lift Wing, and get the C-130s flying low over our house at least 2 days a week. I thought they were pretty loud....they were whisper quite compared to that thumping radial just a hundred feet over my head.

OBIO

Here's a vid of an AgCat starting up...not my video, just one I found on You Tube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX_pA-NGhss&feature=related

And here's another video with a crop duster....I like this video a lot for some reason

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4edfQ4vvLs&feature=related

[OBIO]

The reason the Ag Cat made so many passes over my house...he was spraying the large field across the road. He would drop in over the woods at the east side of the field, do a spray pass, then would have to go into a fairly steep climb to clear the trees along the west side of the field. As the plane went over my house, it would be leveling off to get down range a bit to do a turn about to make additional passes. At one point, before I thought to grab my camera, he was coming in over the field/yard where it was more open and he was lower...but once he got up into the field more and had the trees up by the house to avoid, he did have to climb more....but was still only 30 to 40 feet over the tops of the pine trees at the end of the house at times...maybe 70 to 100 feet AGL as he went over head. I could not tell you if the Ag Cat had the R-985, R-1340 or which other of the radials Grumman used on the various models of the Ag Cat..but I can tell you it sounded sweet and LOUD!

OBIO

[cheezyflier]

on the same page it shows a deadly crash from a flat spin. scary footage.

[Wittpilot]

OBIO, Was the Agcat yellow, with a hint of blue on the anti-glare part of the nose? If so, he was in Urbana filling up and I stopped and watched him spray on my way into Springfield...Unfortunately by the time I stopped he only made two more passes.. but I say he was no higher than 5 ft over the corn at times... man I wish I had my camera....

-witt