Excavator or irrigation trailer.??

[acem]

I had a white pickup drive into my field and park next to one of my irrigation trailers with a few joints of pipe on it. I went out to see him. I recognized him when he got out, regional pipeline field man.  The trailer was parked on an oil pipeline that crosses my place.

Laughing, he said he got a message from the aerial pipeline inspection that there was an excavator on the pipeline. He said their computer (probably AI) got it pretty wrong.

They take pics from above while flying the pipeline once a week. He gets messages about everything they find that looks wrong. 

We discussed how the pipe trailer is about the same width and length as a bigger excavator at 8x35 ft. 

So I'm wondering @mike newman, do you know of any way that my irrigation pipe trailer could become an excavator? 

Here's a pic of the irrigation trailer below 

[acem]

Well bovine excrement.

It won't let my phone post the pic. Let me see if I can hack it...

[mike newman]

3 hours ago, acem said:

..pipe trailer Well bovine excrement.

It won't let my phone post the pic. Let me see if I can hack it...

No issues at all ,Ace....this is a simple and  often    used conversion...pipe trailer to excavator..

you will require four  (4) large loader tyres....say...off a  966 Caterpillar loader...complete with hydraulic motors......you bolt them on the outside of your pipe trailer......Don't use those old coach bolts you snavelled  from that  Electric Power  truck while  no one was looking....use  Caterpillar branded bolts ...they are compatible with your ''modus operandi''  Cat running gear..

Now the next step is to find an old excavator with stuffed tracks......discard the running gear.....gently lower the rest of the excavator onto the pipe trailer..connect the track motor hoses to the wheel hydraulic motors....you will require extra hose and a few hose clips...for the front end...and bingo ...the conversion is ready for the ariel inspection  person...

...forgot about steerage...but i'm sure you will figure that  out .... besides I am too tired to indulge in further verbal compost...but good luck, anyway...

Mike

(Ace has such a fertile mind...never know what is going on in side there...but this should encourage him on his latest  project...)

[Dave Downs]

Friend of mine flew pipeline patrol for over 15,000 hours, I flew with him a couple of times. No cameras were used, if he saw something unusual it was inspected by the good old human eye at tree top height. His normal altitude was about 500 above ground level.

One of the lines he patrolled went across Philadelphia International Airport, he’d call the tower, then went into a holding pattern until they gave him clearance to cross, there were a bunch of tanks on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River; we flew across the airport at 200’ or so.

First time I flew with him was in the winter, he told me to bring my snowmobile suit, surprised I asked him if the heater in airplane was inoperative. No problem with the heater he said but there are some areas in Northwest Pennsylvania that if we should unexpectedly end up on the ground it might take a day or two for us to walk to civilization.

He did have to make 3 precautionary off-airport landings - flew the airplane out of all 3, once after replacing a cylinder jug.

Amazing guy, lost his left hand at 7 years old, retired from flying and operated a D-8 Cat.

Sorry for the long post, lost him a few years ago, I miss him.

RIP Bill

[acem]

After I moved the irrigation trailer, yesterday, I texted him that I moved the 'excavator'. He got a kick out of that!

[twostepn2001]

17 hours ago, Dave Downs said:

flew pipeline patrol

When l drove for Pride Pipeline out of Abilene, Texas, they had two pipeline patrol pilots. One flew a Citabria and the other flew a Cessna 172. At the time, Pride had jet fuel pipelines that ran from Abilene and San Angelo to several Air Force bases like Dyess in Abilene, Carswell in Ft. Worth, Sheppard in Wichita Falls and Reese in Lubbock. You could hear them call the base station in Abilene and tell them they were enroute to whatever AFB and ask for clearance to fly over the base at 200 foot altitude to check the fuel pipelines. All military flights would be put on hold for 30 minutes while they flew over. 

[New Englander]

Pipeline patrol, banner towing, sky diver flights are all avenues for  accumulating the requisite 1500 hours now needed for a right seat airline job. Many foreign airline use an ab-initio training program that put candidates in with very low hours but intense training, sort of what the military does. 

Ab-initio seems to work well but I wonder if the experience the old school of us gained flying junk and gaining some real hard experience is lacking. Probably doesn't matter but when I think of the Airbus stalled all the way to the ocean by one of those low time guys I have to wonder. Fly by wire plane failed down to direct laws. The proper action is do nothing, the plane is trimmed up and will continue to fly fine while you run the checklist and recover a higher flight control law.  

[twostepn2001]

3 hours ago, New Englander said:

gaining some real hard experience is lacking.

One thing that l've notice is the age of a majority lf flight instructors now days. When l took most of my flight training back in the late 60's and early 70's, most of the CFI's were WWII or Korean war veteran pilots. The man l took my very first plane ride with was a flight instructor at Brooks Army Airfield in San Antonio and later was a barn stormer during the 20' and 30's. Another instructor l had was a B-24 pilot in WWII and later a B-25 pilot in Korea. 

But l've noticed, especially watching Juan Browne's accident reports on youtube that there are lots of very young CFI's. Early 20's for example. l just don't know if l would feel very comfortable learning to fly with someone young enough to be my grand son or grand daughter. But then again they say some flying jobs are really stressful and better suited to younger pilots, crop dusters for example. 

[acem]

3 hours ago, twostepn2001 said:

One thing that l've notice is the age of a majority lf flight instructors now days. When l took most of my flight training back in the late 60's and early 70's, most of the CFI's were WWII or Korean war veteran pilots. The man l took my very first plane ride with was a flight instructor at Brooks Army Airfield in San Antonio and later was a barn stormer during the 20' and 30's. Another instructor l had was a B-24 pilot in WWII and later a B-25 pilot in Korea. 

But l've noticed, especially watching Juan Browne's accident reports on youtube that there are lots of very young CFI's. Early 20's for example. l just don't know if l would feel very comfortable learning to fly with someone young enough to be my grand son or grand daughter. But then again they say some flying jobs are really stressful and better suited to younger pilots, crop dusters for example. 

Most all crop dusters I know are old men.  My current crop duster is in his 70s.

When I was a kid, the crop duster (Jim Mitchel) we used was a WWII pilot and quite a dare devil.  He would come straight down, turn flat on the field, then turn straight up at the end.  Figured he was a fighter pilot but now I think he was probably a dive bomber.  I didn't realize that was not normal until later...

I remember the day he crashed in our rice paddy.  I was flagging and heard him crash.  I ran out there expecting he was hurt.  When I got there he was cussing and kicking the plane.  The engine had pulled the mounts loose from the frame.  We pulled the plane out to the county road with a tractor.   Then carried the engine out with a front end loader and loaded it in the back of this pickup.  He went to Wichita KS? and got another engine.  Then we used the loader to hold the engine in place while he welded the mounts back up and made it work.   Took back off on the road and went back to spraying!

Didn't think anything about it at the time.  I was just a teenager.  Probably not an FAA approved repair!

The airplane may not have been designed to be flown like he did either!

[New Englander]

An old saying goes “if you want to learn something well, teach it!”

CFIs, if they really want to do a good job, submerge themselves in the material. Student pilots can present some interesting learning opportunities 😄. I thought about getting a flight instructor rating but built time by ferry flights and being a mechanic I had opportunities that others didn’t. 
 

Through the years and a bunch of ratings and countless simulator training sessions and check rides I’ve come across all sorts of instructors. The best sim instructors were guys with actual time in the model. I had some really good primary and instrument instruction as well as some fine folks in jets. 
I just added a seaplane rating competing my check ride last week. I had two different instructors, the younger was okay, the older better and the examiner was excellent. 
 

Why a new rating in my 70s? Well, every pilot needs a biennial flight review or any kind of check ride. Getting a 135 ride every six months I’ve never needed one but since retirement I would by December. I could have simply hired an instructor for an hour but what fun would that be? Skimming across a lake at 65 mph, visiting different lakes you can’t really see except for in the air, and just learning something new. I’m a firm believer in training.

Did the training in a 1947 Piper PA-12s on EDO floats.