By all means, right away you should fire up FS2004, load one of the Stearman dusters, or one of the six saved flights, and go defy gravity. Do that now, and have a good flight! 

But when you’re done with that, please take the time to read the documentation provided in “Stearman Model 75 Duster and Sprayer”, located in the 1955 model’s folder, and “Stearman_75_ref “, located in each of the individual aircraft folders, and also available on the kneeboard. Many things pertaining to the operation of the airplanes in this software package will be explained there, and some items of historical interest can be found there also.

CAUTION: If you use the saved flights, you may want to start with one of the “clean” airplanes that weigh in at around 2900 lbs and depart from the runways at Imperial County airport. The other flights start from a bumpy dirt airstrip, and two of those flights have the airplane at gross weight. Until you build a little time in the Stearman dusters, and have more than a few takeoffs behind you, it’s probably best to hold off on flying from a dirt strip with a full load. Remember, the heavier the plane is, the easier it will be to drag a wingtip if you over control trying to maintain directional control on takeoff. The narrow track gear demands that you pay attention at all times during ground ops - particularly with a full load.

ABOUT THE SCENERY: You can go directly to the airstrip via four of the saved flights. From the FS2004 “Go to Airport” menu, select or search for: “Jack’s Airstrip”, “65JC”, Holtville, California, United States. The .bgl and texture files for the scenery are located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Flight Simulator 9\Addon Scenery.

ABOUT THE FLIGHTS: You can access the six saved flights from the FS2004 “Select a Flight” menu. In “Choose a category”, scroll down and click on “Stearman Duster and Sprayer”, and then select the flight you want from the six available.

Acknowledgements:

Thank you to everyone who helped test, your skill, talent, patience, and kind attention to detail greatly improved the final result.

Howard Davis –– Beta Test, Flight dynamics input
Brian Dunn –– Beta Test, Flight dynamics input
Bill Foster –– Beta Test, Flight dynamics input 
Jack Hart –– Beta Test, technical support
Grant MacLean –– Beta Test, Editor, Proof Reader, VC wear and weathering textures artist
Ken Stallings –– Beta Test , Flight dynamics input
Ed Thomas –– Beta Test
Bob Warner –– Beta Test, Flight dynamics input
Silver Eagle –– Beta Test, flight dynamics author, technical support, provider of background information, hardware, and comic relief

Special thanks go to Silver Eagle for providing family photographs of dusters, historical information, and great hangar tales about crop dusting in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Thanks also for providing AN, and rare AC hardware to use in this project.
 
As always, a big thank you goes out to Elsa and Donna for assistance and support. 

Also, thank you to Don Reid for his invaluable assistance with gauge images. Don is the author of Aerofoil, which is briefly described below: 

AeroFoil is simply the best multi-point inverse airfoil design tool available, integrated with a full-featured analysis program that equals all the rest, and all at a very affordable price. AeroFoil is an airfoil design and analysis program written in Visual Basic. It is intended to be the most "user-friendly" of its type. AeroFoil uses the vortex panel method and integral boundary layer equations to calculate drag, lift, and airfoil pitching moment at different angles of attack. Direct comparisons of up to three airfoils at a time may be performed. Airfoil design with AeroFoil is both easy and powerful. Changes in the performance characteristics of an airfoil may be made in seconds…Read more at his website, follow the link provided below.

Aerofoil is available here:

http://aerofoilengineering.com/

Thanks also to Abacus Software for the FSDS version 2.24 design program that was used to create these airplanes. At the time of this release, FSDS version 3 is available at: www.abacuspub.com 

Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, this is an excellent program for creating planes and scenery for Microsoft’s Flight Simulator.

And last but not least, thanks to the Microsoft team that produced FS2004, it continues to amaze and entertain on a daily basis. 

Some of the research materials used in this project that may be of interest to the aviation enthusiast:

“Stearman –– A Pictorial History” by Jim Avis and Mark Bowman

“Wings of Stearman” by Peter M. Bowers

A two DVD set from Zeno’s Warbird Videos: “Primary Flight Training, featuring the Stearman N2S” www.zenoswarbirdvideos.com

“Crop Dusters the Early Years 1921 thru 1955”, a DVD produced by Historical Video Production:

http://www.historicaviation.com/historicaviation/product_info.po?ID=9797&product=video&category=home

This video has rare “home movie” footage and photos taken by ag operators and pilots, technical info, historical data, interviews and more.


This project is dedicated to the memory of Bobby Gene, Jack, and Roger. Best wishes to them for calm winds at dawn, and cold beer at dusk. Remember, the Yitai bird will prevail…       


Robert Sanderson   December 2005      

[email protected]