INTERNATIONAL
FROM THE COCKPIT
Bill Lavender bill@agairupdate.com
Those Were the Days
My first landing in an Ag-Cat was in my new B-model on a newly snow plowed runway, somewhere south of Elmyra.
A 6 | agairupdate.com
I had an acquaintance contact me awhile ago and asked if he could send me something. “Sure,” I said. He explained that he had bought some land from a retired farmer that used to be a customer of mine when I had a flying service in the 1970s. While cleaning out the farmhouse, he discovered a desk with some old billing statements in it. Low and behold, the statements were marked paid, dated 10/31/76 from Ag-Air Crop Service, which was the company I had formed in March 1976. I remember that my wife, Sandy, who was the company bookkeeper and loader, had gone to a local print shop to have the statements printed, very simple 8.5 x 8.5 sheets of paper that required filling out by hand script. Shortly after the phone call from my acquaintance, I received the statements in the mail. Sure enough, they were in Sandy’s handwriting and titled “Ag-Air Crop Service”. I am sure you can imagine the memories holding that 44-year old paper held for me. In 1976, I was starting out with a new business with only two previous seasons and less than a 1,000 hours of ag time. I had many lessons to learn in the coming years about not only how to send customers their end of the month statements, but also how to fly an ag plane and run an ag operation. However, at 24 years old, I was bullet proof and you couldn’t tell me anything! I was an ag-pilot with his own ag-plane and spraying business. Gee, did I have a lot to learn! My 1970 C-188A AGwagon “B” with a 300 HP Continental engine and 200-gallon hopper served me well that first year. So well, that I was able to convince the bank to loan me enough money to buy a brand new 1976 B-Model Ag-Cat, an end of the year left over model from Mid-Continent Aircraft Company in Hayti, Missouri. With nearzero cross-country flight time (except for my Commercial Pilot’s license and the ferry flight
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Ag-Air Crop Service P. 0. Box 66-Marshallville, Georgia 31057
BILL LAVENDER•Day or Night•825-3923
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from Georgia to Hayti to trade-in my AGwagon), I took an airline to the Ag-Cat factory in Elmyra, New York to pick up my new Ag-Cat in the middle of January. The operator I had flown for the year
