Lex Anteinternet: Friday, June 13, 1924. Macready jumps into the dark.

Lex Anteinternet: Friday, June 13, 1924. Macready jumps into the dark.: 

Friday, June 13, 1924. Macready jumps into the dark.

Lt. John A Macready, already famous for this; 

The Aerodrome: First "Crop Dusting". August 3, 1921.:

First "Crop Dusting". August 3, 1921.

On this day in 1921, crop dusting, spraying pesticides by air, was performed for the first time in an experiment involving the U.S. Army and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

First crop dusting being conducted.

The first flight featured Army Air Corps pilot John A. Macready and aircraft engineer Etienne Dormoy who performed the test with a Curtiss JN4 over a field outside of Troy, Ohio.  Lead arsenate was sprayed to attack caterpillars.

Dormay left, Macready right.

Macready would complete an Army career prior to World War Two, leaving the service in 1926, but was recalled to serve in the Second World War.  He retired from the Army Air Force in 1948.  He was a legendary pilot at the time and had many firsts while in the service, including being the first Air Corps pilot to parachute from a stricken aircraft at night.

made his aforementioned night jump.

He landed in a tree, which saved his life.

Which, in an odd way, brings up this item:

Mosquito Control Notification: Aerial Granular Larvicide Scheduled for June 13

Laramie, Wyoming – City of Laramie Mosquito Control has scheduled the application of granular larvicide to control larval mosquitoes in rural areas adjacent to the city.  The application is scheduled for Thursday, June 13th beginning at daylight.   The product is a granular form of Bacillus thuringensis israelensis (Bti) that is designed to penetrate heavy grasses and brushy foliage to reach water sources, especially in maturing hay fields, where larvae are present. The application is targeting both nuisance and vector mosquito larva. The product is environmentally friendly and will not harm fish, amphibians, livestock, or other aquatic invertebrates. If weather conditions are not favorable for the application, it will be postponed until weather conditions allow for the application. 

Treatment areas include irrigated acreages along the Big Laramie River southwest of the city, flooded riparian zones in the Big Laramie flood plain southwest and north of the city, and acreages north and west of the city that are irrigated by the North Canal and the Pioneer Canal.  

Schedules regarding Mosquito Control, Parks, and Cemetery chemical applications for control of weeds and insect pests are available daily through the Mosquito Control and Integrated Pest Management Hotline at 721-5056. The schedule is updated at approximately 4pm daily. Spraying information is also available on the city website. Look for the daily mosquito and chemical application hotline tab on the home page at www.cityoflaramie.org.   For further information contact Hunter Deerman, Mosquito/IPM Supervisor at 721-5258; hdeerman@cityoflaramie.org or Scott Hunter, Parks Manager at 721-5257 SHunter@cityoflaramie.org.

Silent Cal had a brief statement for the Press:

Blog Mirror: Laramie Regional Airport Digs Out From ‘Unbelievable’ 45 FAA Violations

 

Laramie Regional Airport Digs Out From ‘Unbelievable’ 45 FAA Violations

Bell UH-1. Downtown Laramie, Wyoming.

 

Blog Mirror: Airmail puts Laramie on the map in the 1920s

Airmail puts Laramie on the map in the 1920s

Blog Mirror: Airport board partners with development firm to attract unmanned aircraft businesses

From the Laramie Boomerang about their airport:

Airport board partners with development firm to attract unmanned aircraft businesses

Frankly, I have a really hard time getting excited about something like this.

Air Subsidies Continue for Cody and Laramie. .. for now.

From Today's Casper Star Tribune, the following headline:

Air service subsidies expected to continue in Cody and Laramie. But larger questions loom.

But that apparently doesn't mean that such subsidies aren't on the firing line still, to some degree.

For those who might not be aware, air travel to Cody is subsidized by the Federal Government for the winter months, and for all passengers all year long for Laramie.  This provides for twice a day winter flights, for example, to and from Cody to Denver during the winter months.

It's pretty safe to assume that without these funds air travel to Cody would be impaired and for Laramie it would simply end.  The Tribune notes, regarding how this works;

United’s new contract to provide service to Cody guarantees the airline an annual payment of $850,000 to provide 14 nonstop trips each week from Cody to Denver between October and May.

That doesn't provide a reason to continue the subsidy, of course, and pure free marketers would argue that if the market doesn't support it, it should end.  On the other hand, it's been proven that a lack of convenient air transportation hinders Wyoming's economy fairly massively.  

For this reason, the state actually seriously took a look, and still somewhat is, on subsidizing air travel withing the state itself, although it didn't get to that. As the Tribune summarized it:

The Wyoming Department of Transportation presented an ambitious fix to the state’s reliance on commercial air carriers, who can currently decide whether and when to provide service — allowing the fortune’s of Cowboy State communities to rise and fall based on the whims of national corporations.

WYDOT proposed effectively creating its own airline, determining which communities would receive service as well as schedules, ensuring, for example, that it was possible for business people to catch an early morning flight into Casper or Rock Springs.

The state would contract with the same regional providers, like SkyWest or GoJet, that United and Delta Air Lines use on branded flights to connect relatively small communities, like those in Wyoming, with major hubs in Denver and Salt Lake City. These arrangements are known as capacity purchase agreements.

“This idea of capacity purchase agreements, for decades, has worked very well for airlines,” WYDOT director Bill Panos told lawmakers last summer.

At a bare minimum, a lack of air service certainly isolates Wyoming's economy.  So, at the end of the day, the argument somewhat comes the degree to which you favor practicality over economic purity, or whether you believe the government should have any role in subsidizing transportation.  The Governor's office noted, according to the Trib:

“Commercial air service is a significantly limiting factor,” Endow’s Jerimiah Reiman said earlier this year. “There’s a lack of air service particularly to global destinations.”

Of course, if we're going to go for economic purity, at some point we'd have to request that the Federal Government cease funding highway construction, which is a subsidy and a fairly direct one.  I can't see that request coming any time soon, but its interesting how in a state that tends to argue for a fairly laissez faire type of economics, we don't feel that way about highways.  No, not at all.  Of course, to be fair, funding the infrastructure, massively expensive though it is, is not the same as funding transportation itself.  I.e., there's no Federal bus subsidy, or Federal car subsidy.  

There isn't a Federal rail subsidy of any kind in most places, of course, although we do still have Amtrak, so I guess that's not fully true.  When railroads carried passengers everywhere cars were not as commonly used for over the road transportation and the Federal Government hadn't gotten in to highway funding yet.  Indeed, if the Federal Government quit funding highway construction it'd change the transportation infrastructure massively and we'd have to wonder if railroads and airlines would be big benefactors.  Anyhow, even at that time the railroads weren't necessarily super excited about passengers and the Federal Government somewhat forced the rail lines to carry them, but it didn't subsidize them.  The U.S. Mail was a big moneymaker for railroads back then, which it no longer is in any fashion, so the railroads had to listen to the Federal Government for that reason if none other.