This is a statement, not an entree to a debate. I live in cotton country. Ag planes fly over my home daily. Until they moved to Walnut Ridge, Ag Cats were produced just down the road. I understand agricultural aviation . . .
I like the Ag-Cat. It's easy to fly and takes care of the pilot in a crash better than most ag aircraft. Up until this season there had not been a fatality in an Ag-Cat in over a decade.
Unfortunately, my friend Petra was killed in one May 28th after she suffered an engine failure not long after takeoff, even though it had been modified with a turbine engine.
Given she was carrying a load of dry fertilizer the aircraft had a lot of drag from the spreader and a lot of weight that couldn't be quickly dumped. It impacted a ditch during the forced landing and she burned to death in the wreckage. I pray she was unconscious when that happened.
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The only Grumman Ag Cat ever produced by Grumman was the prototype. Grumman had Schweizer aircraft refine it and then contracted with Schweizer to build all of them, almost 2500 of them beginning in late 1958 until Grumman sold the rights to Schweizer in 1981.
Grumman had briefly cancelled the contract in 1978 when Grumman spun off it's civilian aircraft with its Gulfstream Aerospace Division, but contracted again with Schweizer when it found it would not be able to economically produce them at their facilities in Savanah GA.
Schweizer bought the design when Grumman got out of the light plane business, but by the early 1990s saw the market for them and it's overall market share declining sharply. They sold the type certificate and tooling to the Ag Cat Corporation in Missouri in 1995.
Ag Cat Corp built a small number of new aircraft (5 are still on the registry) and continued to support the Ag Cat fleet until they sold the design and tooling to Allied Ag Cat Productions in Walnut Ridge in 2001.
The Allied Ag Cat Productions name is a bit of a reach given that they never actually produced any new aircraft. They do however rebuild old aircraft to order and provide FAA/PMA approved parts support for the Ag Cats still working.
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Schweizer Aircraft itself merged with Sikorsky and mismanagement by the folks Sikorsky assigned to ease the transition of the company from Schweizer to Sikorsky killed it.
"Flying with the Schweizers" is a good read that does a good job of illustrating what made American business and industry great and how it all went south beginning in the 1980s as American business and finance transitioned to a focus on stock value and ever larger profits, rather than on actual production, quality or R&D.
Larry
