The dealer who bought the factory

Fred Ayres made his name selling and modifying the Thrush, Leland Snow’s rugged single-seat crop-sprayer that had passed from Snow Aeronautical to Rockwell. His company specialised in fitting turboprops to Thrush Commanders. On 23 November 1977 Ayres bought the whole business: Rockwell’s Albany, Georgia, factory and the production rights. Under Ayres the Thrush gained two-seat and turboprop versions, plus the Bull Thrush and a Polish-engined Pezetel Thrush, and by 1981 the company was even running a school for crop-dusting pilots.

Armoured crop-dusters

The Thrush’s strength and load-carrying made it useful for a darker kind of spraying. For the US State Department Ayres built the Narcotics Eradication Delivery System, a Turbo Thrush with an armoured cockpit and engine to survive ground fire over drug crops; nine were sold between 1983 and 1985. In 1989 it developed the V-1-A Vigilante, a PT6A-powered Thrush with FLIR and six pylons for up to 1,200 lb of weapons, but no military customer came forward. A 1993 deal to sell ten Turbo Thrushes to Iran was blocked by sanctions.

The Loadmaster gamble

In 1996, encouraged by Federal Express, Ayres began the LM200 Loadmaster, a single-propeller freighter driven by two coupled turboprops and designed to carry 7,500 lb of parcels. To build it, Ayres bought the Czech aircraft maker LET in September 1998. The programme drained the company. In 2001 creditors foreclosed, Ayres went bankrupt and the Loadmaster was cancelled. Thrush Aircraft bought the Albany assets in 2003 and still builds the Thrush, of which almost 2,000 have been sold since 1956.

工場

• Albany plant · Albany, Georgia — Built by Rockwell in 1965; Ayres 1977–2001; now Thrush Aircraft
• LET Kunovice · Kunovice, Czech Republic — Owned 1998–2001

人々

• Fred Ayres · owner