Speeches

In my class we have been doing speeches.

Mine was about topdressers.

here it goes.

Hello my name is Marshall and today i will be talking to you about the history of Topdressers or "fertilizer planes" as you might call them. The idea of topdressing was shown in 1936 by a farmer in hawkes bay, he used a light aircraft to oversow cloverseed.

In 1938 Mr.A.Pritchard then a pilot in the Public Works Department experamented with sowing lupin seed by air on coastal sand country. in 1948 it was proposed that topdressing trials whould be carried out, with  the royal New Zealand Air Force supplying the aircraft. Seven tons of "hard to get" Superphosphate

were obtained by the New Plymouth Fertilizer Works and costs and spreading methods were looked at.

A Tigermoth was initially selected to do the spreading but because of a small payload it was decided to use a Douglas dakota DC-3.

This decision was changed again because the corrosive affects of fertilizer werent known and the DC-3 was and expensive machine to run so a Grummin Avenger was used.

The modern Day Topdresser have so much grunt and pushback force that causes them to land in less than a 90 meter strip of land.
now enjoy a clip of a modern day topdresser at work