Well, it’s either that or tractor pulls.
(some of the engineering on the pulling rigs is ASTONDING, though- I mean, let’s import multiple surplus Russian helicopter engines, tie them to the same drive train, and oh yeah- boost them with nitrous. because boredom and rural machine shops.)
As I understand it, the right to repair movement has quite a faction of farmers fighting for the right to work on and upgrade their own farm equipment. Something John Deere doesn’t want you to do.
Follow social media for a few days and look for some bruised up teenagers who are saying something like “Wow, we did some crazy shit a few nights ago. That crazy-ass Zennie did a great upside-down landing out in some field. I called my brother and he came got us cause we couldn’t flip it back on its wheels.”
Back in the 80’s in southern Florida it was not uncommon for drug traffickers to land/crash/bail out of small planes because they were cheap compared to the drugs.
Tahlequah and low flying planes? I’ve heard this legend before
Yeah, a drug runner that jumped when intercepted was my first thought, but you would think they would be aware of the situation in that case.
Alternately, a drug runner who stole a plane with the intention of jumping.
i’ll just point out: OKLAHOMA
Has anyone seen Harrison Ford lately?
He can’t be bothered crashing anything as mundane as a Pie Chaser.
I spent far too much of my life flying out of small town airstrips. One of the occasional odd rituals at these airstrips is called “hand-propping”, which is used when the plane is old enough to forgo such niceties as a starter motor or, more often, when the battery is dead. It involves flipping some switches, rotating the prop slowly a few times, flipping more switches, opening the throttle, then giving the prop a mighty heave which hopefully starts the engine. Ideally, this is a two person process, one person sits in the cockpit holds the brakes and handles the switches and throttle, the other flips the prop. If, however, no one else is around, some will try to set the controls and brake (somehow), get out of the cockpit to flip the prop, then jump in quickly to hold the brakes and adjust the throttle. Sometimes, the solo act goes wrong and the plane starts moving before one can jump in. If lucky (not lucky is not pretty), they get to watch their plane fly away and crash. And, if the plane or pilot is unlicensed, it’s often cheaper to walk away and act like they never went to the airport.
By the way, if you look carefully at the hands of older pilots, you’ll notice that quite a few are missing parts of their fingers on one hand. Sacrifices to the propeller god.
BBs in ma wood yo
Even in the rural UK, most farms had some old banger, that would cost far to much to make road legal, so instead it was used to teach the kids how to drive, and was generally just abused for entertainment.
Rural areas don’t have much for kids to do, so we make our own fun.
I mean, as fun as the speculation is, that is almost certainly what happened. The auction company or the owner they sold it to parked it at the airport and then the forces took over that can sometimes take over when you engineer something to fly as easily as possible and also be ultralight.
It happens:
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