Is it time to arm crop duster pilots as well as airline pilots?

Perhaps many of them moved to central California?

Could be...but these days, many of the sleepy towns in the Valley or becoming
subdivisions to someplace. Tract housing abounds!

I was shot at a
number of times in the San Joaquin valley in both airplanes and
helicopters with at least one hit.

I was shot at while flying an Air Tractor in Georgia. Didn't get hit, tho...


-John
*You are nothing until you have flown a Douglas, Lockheed, Grumman or North
American*

"Bill Denton" wrote in message
...
[...] He said it was obvious they weren't trying to bring him down as the
hits were rarely in a critical area; they mainly just wanted to scare him
away. If they'd brought a plane down it would have attracted even more
attention which was what they were trying to avoid in the first place.

I think he was being too optimistic. Anyone dumb enough to grow illegal
crops near a relatively high-traffic area like a pipeline is also dumb
enough to attempt to shoot an airplane down. That's before even bothering
to consider the unlikelihood of the shooter being able to intentionally
avoid making a critical shot at a moving airplane.

Sounds to me like your friend was just plain lucky not to have been shot
down.

Pete

Bill Denton wrote:

He said it was obvious they weren't trying to bring him down as the
hits were rarely in a critical area; they mainly just wanted to scare him
away.

I think he's lucky. It's a real bear trying to hit something the size of a light
aircraft moving at perhaps 100 miles an hour. These guys must've been excellent
marksmen to score at all. Assuming that they can choose to hit a non-critical part
instead of a critical one is folly. The only thing that kept him alive is the fact
that so much of an airplane is non-critical when we're talking about a 30-06 shell.

George Patterson
This marriage is off to a shaky start. The groom just asked the band to
play "Your cheatin' heart", and the bride just requested "Don't come home
a'drinkin' with lovin' on your mind".