Posted on 10/22/2001 1:26:13 PM PDT by umbra
A Mississippi River towboat that was sprayed with an unknown substane by a crop duster has been released from quarantine.
The towobat and crew of 11 were released at 12 a.m. this morning. The towboat and its 17 barges of coal are again streming towards their destination of Tampa, Florida. The towboat had been quarantined since Friday afternoon.
A Mid South towing spokeswoman says that investigations by the EPA and the Mississppi Department of Agriculture have been completed. The results of the investigation have yet to be published.
Law enforcement agencies are still searching for the cropduster and a pleasure boat the plane also sprayed.
Send him to the FBI, they are still "considering" the people's justice.
Chain them to a lamp post on a busy street corner, wearing signs that say that they were caught spraying people with something. Hoax or not, I bet a few people would dispense some form of justice.
Last I heard, every cropduster takeoff in the U.S. had to be pre-approved by the FAA. That may have changed, and even if it hasn't, I have very little confidence that it has been competently enforced.
MM
I'd say not long, since your 9mm would not likely have much effect; the pilot probably wouldn't even notice. On my boat, I carry a semi auto .30'06 and a 12 guage. Much more effective.
Actually there are rules on the books now ,and have been for a long time, that prohibit dropping anything from a plane that could cause property damage or personal injury to anyone on the ground and I guess spraying would be just as applicable. This would be a violation of FAA rules and would get your flying certificate yanked and probably permantly. I am sure that this would also be criminal too and likely a federal offense at that.
I dont know what this planes altitude was but there are also rules about how high you have to be to fly over water craft and populated areas.
I wonder if there are unknown chemical or bio agents that no one knows about right now? If you dont know what you are looking for, how do you test for it?
Maybe the missing AG plane from Florida just showed up!
Don't know, two clips would be mighty excessive, especialy considering you'd be doing real well to get a couple/three shots off, the rest would just be reckless endangerment of anybody downrange. :) Suggest using something with more power, M1A or other .308 would be best, AK/SKS would be OK as would AR-15 or other .223. Even a 12 gauge, with 9-12 pellets of 00 Buck per shot would be a better choice. In fact since shotguns are designed for shooting at flying targets, this would seem ideal. Never mind Patton shooting down that Nazi airplane with his 1911, you'd be better off with a shoulder fired weapon.
I assume the Navy aircraft don't actually drop anything on you, nor shoot at you. This bozo did drop/spray something on both the barges/tug, and the pleasure boat.
This was on cnn earlier today. The report of the low flying cropduster was on CNN this morning. Good luck finding it.
Oh, boo hoo hoo! The sky is falling, the sky is falling!!
He got so excited he turned the spray on too soon. And then he had to go back for a second look and sprayed the barge.
Let's not be paranoid people.
Probably been doing for decades, but nobody cared before.
I don't know where you find "these crop duster guys" you claim to work with but with the kind of behavior you suggest not one of them would have kept his "seat" for ten minutes with any agricultural aviation I have ever associated with, loaded for, flown with, been chief pilot for, managed and/or owned in the 52 years I have been around the industry!
They'd have been packed off to the airlines with all of the other erks who can't fly!
Keep in mind, its a very hard process to load the precise amount of chemical so that you run out right at the end of the field with nothing left to spray.
Rubbish. Even before modern equipment including precisely-accurate ground-loading and aircraft-mounted spray flow meters, precise GPS spray-run "marking" and Million-Dollar modern aircraft it was a piece of cake for a capable pilot to end the last run with an empty tank!
This'll turn out to have been an hysterical over-reaction to the whiff of a bit of drift -- probably only the smell -- defoliant stinks! -- from an ag pilot simply doing his job in a field as the boats went by.
More than one run "at them?" Of course. The airplane sprays a limited swathe and has to go up and down some fields a hundred times or more!
Kinda does make you wonder, after all didn't they go around the country looking at all the cropdusters/owners? Surely they'd at least have some bit of an idea since the range on those aren't exactly all that long, plus they had to have come into contact with some kind of air traffic control, unless they did this very locally (by that I mean took off a mile or two away, did it, and landed at the same place or close by).
Then why search for pleasure boat ?
I don't believe this is what happened, but, what if? It is possible isn't it?
Didn't know until this post that the barges were transporting coal. I'm relieved that the loads weren't grain or seed.
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