Aerial Crop Dusting

Every once in a while from the ground or up in the air, I see a crop duster at work. It is pretty amazing to watch. Then lately, I have been hearing how crop dusting or agriculture aerial application industry is doing pretty well and has advanced technically as well. It sounds like for the right person, it could be a good aviation career as an agricultural pilot.

Recent articles

Recently, there has been crop dusting articles in the Wall Street Journal and Associated Press. The Associated Press crop dusting article talks about the industry, and how it has increased recently. Some new sprays have come out for diseases that happen when crops are mature, these are hard to apply from the ground without destroying part of the valuable crop. Perfect for aerial application. In the Wall Street Journal crop dusting article, it also talks about how crop dusting is on the rise and is one of the few jobs a pilot can make decent money. But it really cautions that crop dusting is not for every pilot. This two articles sparked me to find an old AOPA Pilot magazine crop dusting article that I remembered from June 2007. It talks about how the industry has changed quite a bit to using GPS significantly for tracking and accurate spraying as well as using Air Tractor turbine driven turboprop planes or turbine converted older planes. If you can find your old AOPA magazine, I remember some good pictures to go along with the on-line article.

Videos

Pictures and articles don't do cropdusting justice, so I thought I would look on YouTube. Yep, there are some good videos there.

• Video: Aerial Crop Dusting - Australia: with multiple planes working together and night crop dusting. It is pretty amazing to think of night crop dusting, but I found reference to doing this in hot climates.
• Video: Crop Dusting Compilation: Supposedly a video response to the previous video. Another good video.

More Good Crop Dusting Information

Digging around a little more, I found an airliners.net article on crop dusting and a little on becoming an ag pilot.

Then I found the most crop dusting information on an association for aerial crop dusting: National Agricultural Aviation Association (NAAA). On the NAAA web site there are multiple articles on becoming an ag pilot and getting a crop dusting job as well as links to FAA publications on crop dusting and other links as well as a convention coming up for crop dusting. Lots of good stuff on the NAAA site.

I also found this crop duster / agricultural pilot information on an aviation career website.

Summary

It is an amazing industry and amazing to watch the pilots doing their job.


/Brian

Banner Tow Pilots

This summer we were at Myrtle Beach, SC, and I was amazed again by the banner towing pilots. Along the beach, their job looks pretty simple (although probably a hot one). Back at the North Myrtle Beach (Grand Strand KCRE) airport, their job looks a little more interesting. I believe the business we were watching was Barnstormer's Aerial Advertising.

Coming in with a banner or picking up a new one, the job does not look to bad. Similar to landing.



Then they drop the banner.

The next part is what looks interesting. They go full power and a steep climb near stall. The FAA recommends a climb at 1.2x the stall speed until about 250' AGL. There are a number of reasons for this maneuver. They also remark that most of the accidents are involving stalls during banner pickups which does not seem to surprising after watching it.


The plane they used was a simple cub. It was interesting they pulled the cowling off. I guess for extra cooling while going slow.

The FAA has a informational manual for banner tow operations. It is interesting reading especially if you have seen the procedure up close.

I looked on youtube and found a couple of videos which show towing operations pretty well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NFci4qefjs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1Btytu1bAI

/Brian