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Become a brush pilot5/7/2023 When dealing with such terrain, the goal is to spend as little time rolling on the ground as possible, so the pilot must be able to achieve short take-off and landing rolls.Īdditionally, most bush airplanes are taildraggers, as the main landing gear of a taildragger is more robust than tricycle gear. A bush pilot needs to be able to land on, and take off from, grass fields, dirt strips, makeshift roads, beaches and patches of scrubland or desert. Taking off and landing in the bush calls for a whole different skill set than that needed for conventional airfield-based flying. Tourism was soon added to the list of bush flying applications in Alaska.īush pilots soon began to operate in remote areas all over the world, and the practice continues to this day in areas where there is no other means of access. In Alaska, in 1924, Carl Ben Eielson, a World War I flier from North Dakota, of Scandinavian ancestry, also used a Curtiss JN-4 to set up an airmail and passenger bush flying service. Further west, Wilfrid May, a former naval pilot, arranged to sell a Curtiss JN-4 to the city of Edmonton for twenty-five Canadian dollars.Īfter setting up May Airplanes Ltd., May hired pilot George Gorman and mechanic Peter Derbyshire, who began a bush-flying newspaper distribution service. Thanks to Laurentide, the flights were able to continue, and bush flying became firmly established in eastern Canada. Two years into their new career, the men found their operating costs spiraling, and looked to Wilson’s Laurentide Air Services company for financial help. Both airplanes were on loan from the US Navy.Īssisted by his engineer, Walter Kahre, Stuart Graham became the world’s first official bush pilot, operating fire patrols and airborne photography missions from the summer of 1919 onward. The airplane’s purpose was to look out for forest fires and map remote wooded areas.Ī second aircraft of the same type was delivered by Graham a few days later. The bush flying scheme was the brainchild of Ellwood Wilson, a Canadian forester. On June 8, 1919, Stuart Graham, a World War I pilot born in Boston in 1896, and raised in Nova Scotia, delivered a Curtiss HS-2L Flying Boat to Lac-à-la-Tortue (now part of Shawinigan, Quebec, Canada) after a record 645 mile cross-country flight. Inhabitants of remote areas rely on bush pilots to carry mail, newspapers, passengers and all manner of essential items, which they would otherwise have to go without. Alan Grinberg Cessna 185 bush plane in Alaskaīush airplanes are often adapted to the terrain they will be using to land and take off – they may have unusually large wheels and tires, enabling them to use fields as runways, or they may be equipped with floats for landing on water. Bush pilots are skilled at flying in and out of remote areas that have no paved runways.
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