Grumman AG-CAT

    About Sam Riggs

An old flight instructor once told me that there are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots! I've always believed that to be true. My name is Sam Riggs and I am coming upon my 51st. anniversary as a pilot. I am approaching my 66th. birthday and started flying when I was fourteen. My parents didn't think aviation was a good field to go into, so I had to sneak out of the house to take my flying lessons in the nearby big city of Tulsa. The more I flew, the more I liked it-by the time I was sixteen and experienced my first solo, “hooked” was an understatement. Back then, we learned to fly in tail draggers; we didn't have a lot of fancy computer equipment so we had to learn the basic principles of pilotage and dead reckoning. In those airplanes, you didn't get a second chance. I went to school and received all the ratings I could; now, I fly just about anything except a balloon! I might do that when I retire!

My flying career has been varied. I've flown single-engine crop dusters across the Atlantic on several occasions and built a lot of hours flying seaplanes in the Gulf of Mexico . My real love, however, has always been crop dusting. After spending several years making a very-good living and gaining an excellent reputation for my skills as a crop duster, guys started approaching me to teach them how to fly crop dusting aircraft. Before I knew it, I was spending more time teaching guys to fly tail draggers and to crop dust, than dusting myself.  I opened up one of the first training schools in the world in my hometown of Claremore , Oklahoma and have been going strong ever since.  I moved to Belize , Central America on the Caribbean Sea to enjoy the sunshine, beaches, bikinis, palm trees and all that goes with a tropical paradise. After five years of that, I sold my hotel where my students stayed and returned back to Oklahoma . I rode my motorcycles about five months when, all of a sudden I came up with the brilliant idea to go to Iraq with the War, where I served as a Department of Defense Civilian for 20 some months. That time period was August/04 to March/06.

Safety is an important issue to me and I am proud to say that my crop-dusting school has an excellent safety record. I run my school much like a military-training camp; however, I believe the discipline instilled in my students is what keeps them alive when they are crop dusting or fire bombing. I try and take off a few times each year; Usually I take off for a month during the summer, on a Honda Goldwing motorcycle, visiting our former students while on the job and agricultural operators and the fire bombing operators, staying in touch!

Baby Sam Learning To Swim with China

Sam Riggs