Bristow Photos

[Dave Ed]

Hillers and Bananas

In 1960, Sir Miles Wyatt asked Alan Bristow if he would like to take over the running of Fison Airwork and effectively merge it with Bristow Helicopters so although many of these operations were not strictly Bristow operations they were under Bristows control for a time and many staff joined the company.
Therefore the general feeling is that Fison Airwork, like BEAS, should be included as part of Bristow history. Fison Airwork itself was formed from Airwork and Fison Pest Control and had many contracts in the field of crop spraying of which Panama and Dominican Republic were two. Typical equipment being Hiller 12s equipped with spray booms and insecticide tanks.
Thanks to John Odlin for the following pictures. John is the pilot in the Hiller and at twenty something learnt a lot about flying helicopters on the crop dusting circuit.







Crop spraying has always had a reputation for being unforgiving as there is very little time to react if the aircraft suffers a malfunction.
We were having so many ' incidents' at the time that Dave Bond the Fison Airwork Ops Director said, "they are falling out the sky like bloody autumn falling leaves."





Bogarts Rice Farm. Base for Bristows banana spraying in Valverde Mao, Dominican Republic. Mao was a satellite base to the main base at Walterio, circa1960. Building was a rice shed also used as an open air hangar. Pilot was ............ a locally based pilot at the time, who liked to show off by rocking and nodding his Hiller on the building apex!




So as we can see from previous posts, Bristow Helicopters were always involved in mergers and joint ventures so a few of the company names and colour schemes may not be familiar as you will see in following posts.