Nobody Flathats Anymore

I just read an article in the AOPA e brief about a pilot in New Jersey who toilet papered a school from his plane. It was a rival school to his son's school. He got toilet paper in the trees, on the grounds, the football field etc. Apparently, the rivals do TP each other every year. But not from planes. So GA Informal has got some things to say about this. This is fun for me to talk about. First of all, it sounds like the guy did his mission pretty well. He did a pretty good job of papering the school. When the cleanup was done, there was still paper up in the trees they could not get to. I like the event. I'm on this pilot's side. If I were a lawyer I would defend him pro bono. What he did was childish, sophomoric. He should have left it to the high school teens. If the high school teens did it, on the ground in the usual way, we would never have heard about it. But OH MY GOD IT WAS AN AIRPLANE!. Call the FAA. Call the NTSB. Call TSA. Arrest the pilot. Let's make a new regulation about flying an airplane within 1000 feet of a pep rally! I doubt it can be proven that this pilot did anything illegal. Was he actually below 1000' AGL? It's not illegal per se to drop an object from an airplane. Was he careless and reckless? He didn't hurt anyone or crash the plane. I'm not saying he should have done it. I'm saying anyone who goes after him has no life and is not a pilot and is a real chicken sh++. I'm a CFI so I guess if I defend this guy, I set a bad example for my students. But I don't have any students. If I did I would give them more credit than to think because some guy got away with a prank, they would do it too. Now for my experience with this kind of prank. Buzzing: My whole life I've been buzzing people, things. Pilots get killed doing this. No buzzing is a good general rule because if there is no buzzing, then of course no one will have an accident while buzzing. But everybody buzzes. If they say they don't, they lie. People get themselves killed buzzing because they take risks, or they don't pay attention to the airplane while they look at what/who they are buzzing. Or they don't leave a back-up plan if their engine quits at 200 ft. When I was a private pilot I did some buzzing and got away with it. Once my buddy and I skipped out of graduation practice in high school and flew a rented plane over the outdoor proceedings. We were "skipping" school. And we probably crossed the athletic field at about 500 ft. and racked it around kind of quick and got the heck out of there. We didn't push it into a buzz job. I was 17 yrs old. We never got caught or questioned. I used to buzz my old neighborhood at tree top level. When I look back at it now, I was just lucky I didn't kill myself. Toilet paper: Did a lot of this. A way lot. Not to paper somebody's yard though. What I used to do was take up a plane I had use of and about six rolls of TP. I would climb 4 or 5 thousand feet and toss out the paper. It unravels into a pretty good streamer if you throw it right. Then I would just circle around and cut the streamer as many times as I could before the streamer got to the ground. Sometimes my buddy would meet me with his plane, from a different airport. We would form up and screw around and climb and then throw out a roll. Then we would take turns cutting it up with our planes. It was a game of "chicken" because the last cut would be at the treetops. But the real danger in this game was keeping track of the other airplane so as not to mid air. We didn't do this game once or twice. We did it all the time. There was an abandoned airport we used to land at after a TP session. We would land and clean the TP off the struts, wheels, engine cowl, engine, etc. Then fly back to home field where the owner might be. Pranks: When I was a sophomore in college my friend and I had use of a 150. I had a cute girlfriend who was counseling at a summer camp up in Pa. We decided to fly up and beat up the place to impress her. Maybe. We flew across at about 1500 ft AGL to recon the place. Yes, they we all outside in the camp area. I decided to go for one straight pass real low instead of an airshow. I wanted this girl to know it was me. I came across this camp so low I had to pull up to clear the net on the tennis court. We dropped an object too. It was an undergarment belonging to her. The next day I talked on the phone with her and she said everyone was there and saw the buzz. She was embarrassed by the underwear, and in general it was a huge hit. We were invited to the big dance that Saturday as counselors could have a date. I was planning spending the night with this girl somehow and she had a friend for my friend. It was a girls' camp and strict about the boys leaving after the dance and lights out. When we got there everything was going well and the campers were telling us they saw the plane buzz the tennis courts. We were making out pretty well with these two counselors. But then this big old man who was the head of the camp got right in my face and asked me to come aside and talk to him. He was not friendly looking. He told me that at 10:30 when the dance was over my friend and I were getting in our car and leaving for Maryland. And we would not be coming back to the camp again. And he was going to have no trouble at all from us. And did I want to know why we wouldn't cause any trouble. And I said 'Yes sir." He showed me a slip of paper with the N number of the Cessna 150 and the name of a Pa. state police sgt. He said "just one call is all I have to make. Are we clear?" Dropping objects: TP of course. Rolls of crepe paper are better. Balloons, we did that too. One buddy used to fly over my strip on the way from Florida to the jumping off points for the north Atlantic. Bangor , Halifax, Presque Isle, etc. in ferry tanked singles and twins. Sometimes he'd paper my place with streamers made of the edges of old printer paper. The kind you could tear off. These would be scattered all over the place. I found little pieces for years. Once he dropped one of those Pepperidge Farm cookie bags with a cookie in it that was mostly intact, with a note. It came to rest on the centerline. Some fly- ins up to present day still drop flour bombs to a target on the ground. The guy who gets closest gets a prize. I dropped flour bombs at my place with just two planes here once because one of my friends asked if we could do it. I was in one plane and both planes cheated. Chasing down kites and ballons and RC airplanes: I've seen many a stray toy balloon, even in an airliner, but rarely chased one. Once in my M-10 I circled with some RC planes, but I kind of stayed above them and I was uneasy about it. They are hard to see and unpredictable. Back in the old College Park days my boss took out a kite just for fun in a J-3. The kite was vaporized. But the string got so wrapped around the crank that the seal had to be changed. I wish I could be the judge who decides what punishment the New Jersey TP pilot should get. I would make the guy clean up the toilet paper he dropped. That's it. GAI :::::+:::::