The pine trees in south Georgia sure grow tall. This was the singular thought that kept racing through my mind as we blasted across the open peanut field at 145 miles per hour five feet off the ground before pitching up at the last instant to skim over the tops of the 90-foot-tall trees, missing their outstretched boughs by a few feet.
With each pass, Thrush test pilot Terry Humphrey would put the airplane into a 60-degree climbing turn, unload the wing and slice an arc back toward the tree line, barely avoiding the pines before aggressively jabbing forward on the stick to get us back down on the deck — the sprayers coming on — as we’d tear across the field in the opposite direction.
