They go up diddley up-up, they go down diddley down-down

[captpackrat]

I got woken up this morning by an airplane buzzing by the house.  I figured it was our friend in the Air Tractor, and he sounded even closer, so I started getting dressed.  It took him a while to do the field Saturday, so I didn't hurry or anything.  Had I known what was actually going on, I'd have just thrown on my bathrobe and raced outside.

By the time I finished dressing and changing filters on my camera, it was too late, the pilot had left the area.  Then my roommate told me the plane had been spraying the soybean field right in front of the house.  I'm really annoyed that I missed that, because it must have been an aerobatic extravaganza to rival the Blue Angels.  This particular field is rather small, only about 6 acres, and is bordered on the north and south by tall trees and there is a 3 story barn less than 10 yards from the eastern edge.  And to make things even more difficult, there are telephone wires running east-west across the middle of the field, and then north-south across the road on the western edge.  He would have had to do some awfully skillful maneuvering to cover the whole field.

I'm rather annoyed that I missed the whole thing.

Comments

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

So... why did you have filters on the camera while you yourself were unclothed? A bit of a contradiction, I think! ;-)

[captpackrat.livejournal.com]

I always keep a UV filter on my camera, to protect the lens. But for taking pictures of the sky, nothing beats a polarizer filter. So I was swapping the filters.

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

Ah. I'm sure I could benefit from using, for example, a circular polarizer on a small number of occasions. But I'm not sure I actually like the look of the unnaturally dark sky you see in examples where people show off what you can do with these filters. It is always a striking effect, but it doesn't always look right.

[cateagle.livejournal.com]

Now that sounds like it'd be quite the flying exhibition to watch. Mind you, I think that for those conditions I'd prefer a very nimble Ag-Cat biplane to an Air Tractor or any of the other specialized crop dusters (*chuckle* it's from long ago, but I can admit to being rather familiar with the Cessna 188 in its variations).