Ah, my first turbine. I know you guys flying the kerosene burners remember yours just as well as you remember your first piec...well, you know what I mean. I used to scare myself on a daily basis in the round motors. I was so conservative flying that engine that it only took an instant to get behind the power curve and then it was all shakes and sweats. But it taught me to think so far ahead of the aircraft that being scared almost became a nonevent. But then...
Power. Oh man. Power. And no oil changes. And no bad mags. I was, as we say around these parts, shi***ng in tall cotton. I loved that plane. I flew it for almost three years and then sold it to a Cajun down in Abbeville, LA whose pilot promptly wrecked it.
But it got rebuilt and I think he's still flying it. Haven't talked to him in a while, I need to give him a call. This pic is posted on a friend's web site. I'll just cut and paste the description that I wrote for him.
"The plane is a Grumman/Schweizer Ag-Cat Super B, 400 gallon hopper, Tall Tail, Goosefeet, Elevator Servos, High Wing Kit and 115 gallon fuel. Airframe is 0 timed. Jim Krepps of Malden Ag-Craft in Malden, Missouri did the airframe work.
The turbine conversion was done by Bill Hatfield of Turbine Conversions Inc. in Nunica, Michigan. The engine is a 750 horse Walter turboprop manufactured in the Czech Republic. The propellor is an Avia/Hamilton Standard also made in the Czech Republic.
The engine and prop came from Darrell Riddell of Riddell Flying Service in West Helena, Arkansas. Darrell pretty much coordinated the effort and the conversion was done at his facility.
The DGPS swathing system is made by the Picodas Group of Ontario, Canada. It is an Ag-Nav 2. The plane is also equipped with a Crophawk Flowmeter and smoker.This is the first fully STC'ed Walter Conversion Ag-Cat in the world. A "one-of-a-kind" type aircraft right now although I'm sure there will be many more."
And here's one of the panel. Note that I ordered an inclinometer (ball) from Wag Aero and installed it myself. I figured the airplane was just too "uptown" not to have one. Hehe, don't know that I ever looked at it though. The computer screen in the center of the panel is a "moving map" DGPS swathing system. It used the Coast Guard differential (this was way before WAAS). The cool thing about it was that it "painted" everything I did on the screen. So if I got a little off the swath, or had to shut off early because of some type of obstruction (dogs, deer, people, cars, etc.) it would "paint" it on the screen and it was a simple matter of going back to fill it in. I paid about 30K for this unit and it was cutting-edge at the time. I have a Satloc "moving map" today and believe me they are just as sweet now as they were then. Put the traditional flaggers out of business and took a LOT of guesswork out of the job.
I was so proud of this airplane that I could have burst, and, to be fair, for good reason. It was a heck of a performer. It had a 400 gallon hopper and my round motor A's were 300 gallon. This plane tripled the amount of work I could do in a day.