It's a bird! It's a ... holy $#!+ it's a plane!

We live not far from an airport. It's not a "major" airport, but it is big enough for 737s and home to an Air National Guard base. So a couple of big air force cargo jets often practice takeoffs and landings. One of the main flight paths also crosses over a major highway in the area, so it's not uncommon to be driving along and have these huge planes fly a few hundred feet over your head.

Well, today I was driving home and heading down the road that basically stops at the end of the runway. About a half-mile from the airport there's a big intersection, and as I'm slowing down for the light I see a C-130 that had just taken off. Only problem is, it's only a couple hundred feet off the ground and turning right toward the intersection. Damn thing looks like it's about to crash right into us. I about crap my pants as I try to figure out what to do.
The thing finally gains some altitude and keeps on that hard right turn. Couldn't have been more than 400 or 500 feet up when it crossed over the intersection. It was low enough that I could actually see the propellers spinning.
I've never seen anything like that before. It was kind of cool since it didn't actually crash, but it had me shaking for 10 or 15 minutes afterward.

 

Spend some time in the White Castle by Chicago Midway and you'll get to experience that same feeling, repeatedly.

 

The Florida Keys use planes to spray for mosquitos. Use to have an old DC-3 when I lived there. These guys fly low, obviously, and with the elevated houses, you can actually see the pilots faces. I was standing outside my front door one day and the plane is running its grid, has passed my house headed south and is making a big U-turn to come back by northbound. I stood there and watched it, shortly after 9-11, and thought to myself.. my god, he's going to shoot me. I waved at the pilot and went inside. But it was weird.

 

Several years back, I was heading to one of our area schools during football tab season. The road there runs right through farmland, and a cropduster was making his rounds as I was driving through. It was a little unnerving to see these guys 50 or 100 feet off the deck, but at that height they're so low you can get a sense of whether they're in trouble or not. That wasn't the problem on that encounter.
My open window was.
I wasn't even thinking about having it rolled down until it was too late. The guy sprayed a field right as I was driving underneath him. It's a miracle I wasn't poisoned to death. I spent the next hour spitting and tasting that crap in my mouth.

 

Amateurs.

 

I still don't know how that plane didn't clip the fence with the gear...

Batman, your story reminds me of the clips I've seen from Kai Tak, Hong Kong's old airport, closed in '98:

 

Glad you're still with us Batman.

 

In NW Ohio, when you're driving on I-75 somewhere south of Toledo (Findlay, maybe? It's been a while since I've been up there), there's an airport with a runway right off the highway. That'll freak you out when you're driving there and unfamiliar with the territory. First time a plane zoomed barely overhead, I nearly swerved off the road.

 

My sophomore year of high school, we had Eisenhower Day in mid-October. That year, they had organized for the local army base to do a fly over with a stealth bomber.

This was a month after 9/11 and the teachers had forgotten to tell....pretty much all of the students. So we see this thing flying maybe a few hundred feet up right after the Star-Spangled Banner. It was close enough that we could see the individual windows on the cockpit. Needless to say, there was screaming, panicking and a lot of chaos, especially from the high schoolers who understood the whole thing about us being at war now.

 

...

Yes.... just when you're coming into Findlay from the south.. just off to the right of 75

 

Crop dusters are in-fucking-sane. They crash all the time in farm country, because they're flying so low and so close to trees and power lines.

My farming in-laws have some great stories about the crop dusters flying under some power lines on their acreage.

 

I can attest to this, Bob. Only I was IN the plane.