**Requested by Ramjet**

I have built a John Deere BO-Lindeman crawler. I was surprised that anyone on SimplePlanes has heard of this rather rare tractor, so I built it right away. I like many of the remaining examples of this machine, this one has a scraper blade in the front. You can remove it if you don't want it, but I thought I should add it. My grandfather actually has two of these with certificates of authenticity, one with a scraper and one without.

In the early thirties there were only a few companies making crawler tractors in the United Stated Of America. International Harvestor, Holt and Best. None of those companies had a crawler tractor that was completly suitable to working the steep terrain on which the orchards of the north west were located and none of them were so designed to successfully get under the trees without doing damage to the trees and operator (ouch) and still be able to navigate the steep terrain. Jessie Lindeman, a businessman in Yakima, Washington, decided to persue the possibility of designing a tractor that would meet this challange. Since the orchard operators were using the John Deere Model "BO"tractors (special model B tractors made for use in orchards by lowering the tractor and moving the exhaust pipe) with rubber tires, Jessie engineered a track design to fit this tractor. He designed the total track frame, final drives,steering clutches, tracks and rollers. He then cast the needed parts in a foundry and along with his brothers, Harry and Joseph, machined all the parts in their own shop. The first tractor was manufactured in 1936 and tested on the orchards in nearby farms. After several design changes and ironing out the bugs, they were in business. The Lindeman tractor was such a sudden success that the factory could not keep up with orders coming in. As the news spread out to America, and the world beyond, they expanded larger and larger as a manufacturing factory of the United States. Not only did it become a super hit with the mountian orchards of the northwest but in the northeast also. One of the industries that they did not think of was the logging operations scattered out across North America. This little tractor was just the ticket to replace the mule as a dragging tool. Where the mule was only suited to riding to work and dragging logs, the Lindeman could build the road to the mill, build the mill set pad and make the skid trails around the mountians sides and then drag the logs to the mill. Also very handy in pushing and dragging the loaded trucks through the mud, from the mill to the main road.

This tractor was built by the "The Lindeman Power Equipment Company" from 1936 to 1946, almost 1947. Since the main structure of the tractor was the John Deere power unit and bore the John Deere name on the hood's sides and the front of it's radiator, it was generally known as a John Deere crawler tractor even though it had the Lindeman name cast into the side of each track frame. This makes sense to me, because the tractor was built by John Deere and Lindeman only added tracks.

To drive: Throttle up to move forward. You don't need to do this in any specific amount of time for this tractor; you can sit and admire it for a while. This one has different gears that you may like to experiment with. Throttle up for first(11 mph), ACT1 for second(25-ish mph), and ACT1+2 for third(70 mph). The speeds are outrageously inaccurate, but what can you do, you know? This uses wheels for the tracks, so it doesn't have much rolling resistance.

Use yaw to steer. This is especially fun to watch from cockpit view. I added the steering levers and calibrated them so they really work, so it is really cool to watch. I also didn't just use rotators or landing gear with steering activated to do it, either. I put brakes on both sides that are activated by yaw, so it works sort of like a real Lindeman does. Exciting! I did make the first wheels steerable to reduce the turning radius.

Use VTOL to adjust the blade. VTOL up to put the blade down. Don't put it all the way down while driving it. Set the slider at just under the top notch to keep it out of the way but off the ground. Sliding the slider all the way up to put the blade down and slamming on the brakes is a good way to stop quick. Never put the blade down behind the tractor.