File:Topdressing (crop duster) DC3, Palmerston North, New Zealand 1973 - Flickr - PhillipC.jpg

Topdressing (crop duster) DC3, Palmerston North, New Zealand 1973

This shot was taken during the greatest heights of aerial top dressing of the steep North Island hill country of New Zealand to bring it into grasslalnd production (as it turns out an economic and environmental mistake).
Over the same period NAC (the then domestic airline) and the RNZAF were retiring their DC3s. Two topdressing companies purchased large numbers of these DC3s and lots of spares. Many of the ariframes had expired mainspar lives, so a lot of cannibalisation and use of spares took place to turn this large resource into a smaller number of useable aircraft. Here a DC3 that has just had its mainspar replaced is having its systems checked before replacing the outer wings (if there were fuel and hydraulic problems then the wings would have to be removed again to fix them).
These aircraft continued in use until the early 1980s. There are none left.
As a side story, when I first arrived in New Zealand I had a friend whose parents owned a remote and very rugged farm in the middle of the North Island. We used to visit them a lot. One day they rang me at home in New Plymouth and asked if I could go and direct one of these DC3s to the land they wanted the fertilizer dropped on. In those days cowboys in the form of ex WW2 fighter pilots still had a place in the industry. I spent an afternoon of total terror sitting in the jumpseat as the DC3 roared up valleys towards cliffs, bucking upwards as the load was released, and being flung into high G turns with close up views of the tops of trees.
I didn't realise how close until it was all over. As I tottered out of the plane at New Plymouth Airport I noted the loadmaster pulling branches out of the undercarriage well.