In 1987 during the Chimbu Provincial Elections I was asked to drop political leaflets over many villages in the surrounding mountains. So off came both doors of the 185, more fun than just one door off, and away we went.
On board we had me driving, another pilot as the chucker of leaflets and this fat little Chimbu called Rocky who insisted he had to come along...well Ok Rocky
Rocky sat right at the back and we had bundles of leaflets between he and us. We would fly over a village a thousand feet or so above it (7 to 9000' AMSL/ISA +20)) point enquiringly down and when Rocky nodded affirmative I rolled inverted and went down like a Stuka, with both doors off a 185 there is so much drag that you won't go too fast.
Well we'd flash over the grass huts at dot feet with village kids running around like crazy and hurl bundle after bundle, usually remembering to remove the big rubber bands first
then rock up on a wing tip and peer back to see what 'damage' we'd caused, to be greeted by the sight of most of the leaflets drifting off into the adjacent valley and fluttering down a mile away
Clearly this wasn't good enough so we decided on one run that we'd slow right down and fly over the village at 50'/flap 20/70-80 kts(remember the DA now).
Well we picked a likely village on a ridge line and flew across it in the aforementioned configuration, but when we flew out over the little valley we started to sink alarmingly. I firewalled my faithful IO520 and eased back on the controls...and the stall warning started hooting....continuosly.I tried less flap but VERY quickly went back to the original setting. In front was another ridgeline and the big tall trees on it were getting VERY close and I knew if I rolled on any bank I was likely to stall and spin. The ridgeline sloped away to my right so I released some backpressure, eased on some right rudder with just enough left aileron and did a flat turn toward the lower trees....bloody near made it too! With the stall warning blaring we crashed through the tops of the trees, leaves and twigs flung back from the prop into the cabin......and, miraculously ended up in clear air at some rediculously low forward speed and 3000 feet agl
I dumped the stick forward as she stalled and recovered flying speed in a steep dive before leveling off, looking wide eyed at my 'co-pilot' who said "I think dive bombing worked better".
Rocky was now white as a sheet a didn't come on any more trips that day!!
The only damage was some little dents in the leading edge of the horizontal stabilizer but the leading edges of the prop were bright green!
I shudder a bit when I think about how close we came... but smile at the memory of little village kids crashing into things as they ran flat out while looking up at us...and the look on Rocky's face, with leaves in his hair
Chuckles.