Anyone know what crop dusting pays?????

[670X]

I have Four days a week off and it looks like fun. Every crop duster I have asked just says it pays "well".????
What is well?

 

[414Flyer]

Its a shrinking field and not one you just show up and start flying on your off days. Even if you did find a company willing to train you, you could expect most likely to start out loading chemicals and possibly flagging for a couple of seasons.

Trucks with spray booms are being used more and more, and cropdusters are being used more often as a last resort when spraying has to be done NOW.

 

[RightPedal]

With a million in hand, buy an operation that has a good client base and have the owner stay with you a few years and train you. Then, all you need is enough money coming in from another sourse to keep it up and running.
Seriously, it's an all but dead industry compaired to what it was up through the mid 90's. It can be done. There are many successful single pilot operations out there, but getting in will require some monstrous fortitude.

 

[avbug]

Aerial application isn't a joy ride; it's a profession.

What do you consider "pays well?"

 

[Waldom]

670X, if you approach aerial application with the attitude of something to do in your off time to pick up extra cash, your career will be a very brief one.

 

[bugchaser]

As others have said, flying an ag airplane is not something one does as a part time job. There are jobs out there that pay well, but those are getting fewer and fewer. For those with lots of experience there are occasional opportunities to make good money for a short time. I have a friend who has made about 10k in the last 2 weeks helping some guys out during a busy spell. I have chances to do that kind of thing all the time, but I have given it all up to fly a little Boeing around the country. Let my applicators license expire this year. First time I won't do any spraying in over 15 years. Not gonna miss it much at all.

 

[nosehair]

Depends on the voice intonation and timing.

"It pays,..well?" as in; it pays, ok?, isn't that well enough?

 

[670X]

So it's not part time work huh?????
What do you do the other 9 months its' frigggen snowing in the Rockies?

Don't think you can determine my attitude or my career goals by what I currently work, man the arrogance here is overwelming. Yeah I make my mortgage and then some flying 3 days a week, deal with it. Getting furloughed from a regional was the best thing that ever happened to me.

I love flying low and actualy looking outside. I like working for myself and it seems as though an owner operator is a good way to go. I would like to know what it might pay. All you $1,400 a month SJS guys need to reply somewhere else. I'm looking for answers.

Thanks bugchaser thats the kind of info I need.

 

[414Flyer]

Part time and seasonal are two different things. At certain times, they can be out there dawn to dusk for days and days and days or weeks.

I can completely see why some of the pilots though reacted the way they did though when you said "I have Four days a week off and it looks like fun" and then ask what does it pay, like you can just walk into it and start flying.

I can just imagine what kind of reaction you would get if it you said that out in the field to a pilot or owner/operator. Have a bit more humility about yourself and show more desire to learn about it, and more realization about the high degree of skill it takes to do their job. None of those pilots are in it for the "fun"

 

[avbug]

Actually, you got replies from experienced ag pilots, myself included. It's not a lark; it's a career.

You'll need state certification. You'll need an understanding of chemicals and their specific application to the crop and insect. You'll need to know crops, and you'll need to know insects, as well as have a good grasp of plant diseases, entimology, and the ability to recognize and diagnose the needs of a crop. You'll need to be insurable. That isn't easy in the ag business. You'll need someone who's willing to take a chance on you, and "I like to fly low and look out the window" is a far cry from cutting it.

Ag work is a tough industry with many of the good jobs history, and what's available taken by experience. Much of the equipment today is turbine equipment, and merely because you flew on a regional airliner doesn't equip you, prepare you, or qualify you to fly a turbine tailwheel airplane with very limited performance in a precision application.

What are your tolerances on the ILS? Think you're a sharp cookie, do you? Make it six inches right or left and about a foot of altitude, and hold that all day long with steep turns at 75' every 30 seconds. Do it in turbulence. Then get a drift complaint from a housewife with a dead tree or a farmer with a crop looking for a fast claim, and see your season's profits go away, as well as your job.

Or just add your name to the list of those who made the posted life average for spray pilots years ago of seven years. Some drag it down, some drag it up, but your attitude screams down. As in won't survive the first season, if you're able to find a job, and your attitude doesn't scream "give this guy a job."

The traditional route into the cockpit involves coming aboard as a loader, mixing chemical, working on the airplanes, loading chemical, cleaning the airplanes, assisting in crop surveys in the field (collecting and identifying bugs)...for a few years until you're considered safe and ready to get in a small pawnee and go spray out a few gallons of rinse. Then supervision for a few more years as you get broken in. Many areas of the country, the farmers still call the 20 year local the "new guy." They don't trust the new guy.

You'll be spraying parathion, or diomethoate, or any other number of organophosphates...a drop of the concentrate on your tongue will kill you. Sit in a puddle and your testicles absorb it nearly as fast. It stays in your system. Think about it.

When you're flying low and looking out the window, you'll be seeing crop going by, these days an agnav or satloc bar up near the nose of the airplane that works a lot like a localizer, and you'll be looking for powerlines. Not a lot of sightseeing.

Go haul your butt into an ag school for a start. Then hit the bricks and start asking every spray operator you come to (and you'll likely talk to a lot of them) for a job. You'll get the big picture fairly quickly. You'll soon discover that most operators and most insurance wants at least a thousand hours of ag before they'll talk to you.

Got six thousand hours in your regional airplane doing nice stable point to point flying...and got twenty five hours of ag coming out of your school, for which you just spent as much as a type rating? Then you're not a six thousand hour pilot. You're a twenty five hour pilot, and you can expect your job prospects to mirror that. Check your mirror for arrogance; ag flying isn't a joyride.

What are you going to do for those other nine months? That's up to you. Pursue more work. Get enough years of experience to qualify to fire work, or bigger equipment. Go international. Do like many and follow the crops. Get enough experience to qualify to go south of the border and do some real work; spray poppies and coca. Put your money where your mouth is, lift a finger to help yourself.

You want to be an owner operator doing ag work, do you? You've already heard from some who were. You really need to rethink that. You haven't started and you're in way, way over your head.

Ever done stall practice in steep turns at 75' before? Ever flown under powerlines before? Are you accustomed to washing your aircraft every time you fly it, and are you willing to do that when it's covered in poison? Can you work on the airplane, and do you have the mechanical experience to do it, and the qualifications? You'd better. Do you know what it means to fly a truly performance limited airplane? Ever had a real emergency? Do you know what a real crosswind feels like in a tailwheel airplane? How accustomed are you to working close to powerlines and obstacles. Not looking out the window and enjoying the view, but working the airplane, close to obstacles? What are you going to do at the end of the pass when you pull the stick back to your crotch and the airplane rotates but doesn't climb, and you're looking up at a quad set of powerlines? Still a lark to do in your spare time?

That helmet you'll be wearing...that eight hundred dollar helmet...it's not a crash helmet. It's to protect your head during normal flying. Hopefully you'll never need to find out if it's a crash helmet. You're proud of your flying now, are you? How do you think you'll explain away your first or second forced landing or crash, or wire strike, at your next interview, or the one after that? Do you have life insurance now? Think you'll be able to keep getting it after you start spraying? Have any idea what it will cost?

Thinking of giving up that cozy white shirt cockpit for a hot greenhouse canopy that wreaks of poison, filled with hot ram air and packed with pollen and other things that may just drive your sinuses over the edge? Ever had a bird in the cockpit with you, or a deer strike when one comes sailing out of the wheat or corn, into your wing or propeller? Will you mind having your teeth replaced with artificial ones after you realize that the your originals that are embedded in what's left of the instrument panel after your first wire strike aren't any good any more?

Tell us about your qualifications to do the job. Your low level experience. Your conventional gear experience. Your turbine tailwheel experience. Your ag certification. Your farm experience. Your chemical experience. Your emergency experience. Your maintenance background and experience. Got your own tools? You break it, you fix it, you know.

Your attitude IS arrogance, mate. If you ever climb into the game with one or both feet, you'll find that out very quickly.

 

[gsrcrsx68]

Hahahaaa

The dude asked a simple question...it's like he stepped on a land mine of rude people...Here on FI, go figure.

I bet he didn't realize the "cost" for a simple answer was a bunch of insults to find one cool person (bugchaser) to give him the info he asked for.

670X, welcome to FI.

 

[avbug]

Bugchaser stated he agreed with the other posters. All posters made the same comments. 670X displays a lot of arrogance, and the comments to him were quite well founded.

Curiously, every post here was on topic except...yours.

The poster asked the questions, then complained about the answers. He states he wants replies from ag pilots, he got them. He didn't like the replies. Tough. He wants to enter a working profession, where one doesn't merely sit in the cockpit and look pretty like he did in his regional airplane. A regional job is an entry level job. Ag work is not.

 

[RichardRambone]

So anyway whats the pay again?

 

[670X]

Rambone you got it man


WHats it pay?????????????????????


As far as experience yeah I learned to fly at a quaint little place called Ft. Rucker from guys that flew in NAM. Low level yeah a little NOE at night with goggles... crappy old 5's no less. loved the weight bag on my $800.00 helmet from uncle sugar. Couple of thousand hours later...with a few Pitts & Decathlon hours to spice things up oh yeah lots of instructing too.

I never said I was Chuck Yeager, yeah I know which end of a plane to put oil in. Just because I don't have a fancy AVTAR of a crop duster does not mean I'm less worthy than you.
Maybe AVBUNG if crop dusters were less like you it would not be a dying proffesion full of a-holes.

Think about it.

 

[bugchaser]

Could pay 100k in a good season. Could pay 20k or less the next year. There are some jobs that pay upwards of 100k on a regular basis. Not many, but some. There are many, many more guys out there driving a truck all winter in order to afford to fly again next summer. Once you get the proper experience, it really is a great part time gig. The problem is, you need many years of full time experience to get to that point. Even then, it's not a good idea to do this part time. Thats why I let my applicators license go this year. Bottom line is that it usually don't pay as good as it should and it sure aint as fun as it looks.

 

[avbug]

As far as experience yeah I learned to fly at a quaint little place called Ft. Rucker from guys that flew in NAM. Low level yeah a little NOE at night with goggles... crappy old 5's no less. loved the weight bag on my $800.00 helmet from uncle sugar. Couple of thousand hours later...with a few Pitts & Decathlon hours to spice things up oh yeah lots of instructing too.

In other words, no experience, then. Thanks for clearing that up.

As Bugchaser noted, the pay varies widely...what does it pay? Almost anything. You might fly hundreds of hours in a year and thousands of acres, or you might not. You might have a mechanical problem that costs you the use of the aircraft, and all your profits. What you can expect from a given season varies greatly with the crop and the year itself. I've seen years in which there was nothing, and then suddenly a run of russian wheat aphid, and we couldn't fly enough...then three weeks later it was over.

You could find yourself fertalizing trees all winter; you'll fly until you're sure you've made a big mistake taking the job, and you will make little for doing it. You might spray blueberries and make good money, you might do winter wheat and get average money, you might get a year round job doing stam on rice or something similiar, and have a decent job in the eighty thousand range. All depends. Go spray poppies in Colombia and make ninety grand for two weeks on, two weeks off.

The guys who go get themselves killed are the ones who think they've got it down. You think you've got it down, and you have zero experience. That will get you killed. Regardless of how many "nam" vets trained you.

Flap your gums all you like. You don't appear to be presently paid for holding a spray handle in your hand, which doesn't really give you much room to talk. Listen to Bugchaser. He wasn't an inexperienced kid; he's been around the patch more than once, and you don't see him doing it now, either. In fact, of those that did respond, most of us are doing other things too, or altogether, or several of the things mentioned at the same time. Ag work is great when the work is there, but it's impossible to predict, and in the ag business, life really does come at you fast. It's all NOE, it's all close to powerlines, and it's all precision work. One farmer doesn't pay for the chemical, and you're done for the year, in some cases, especially where the chemical is worth five times your hourly rate per gallon. It happens.

Pony up the money, got sit your butt in an agcat or a pawnee at an ag school somewhere, and get a sampling, then hit the road and ask every operator you see for a job.

You might get lucky.

 

[670X]

Thanks bug chaser I think that is exactly what I wanted to know.

 

[svcta]

Geez, people, it's not like he insulted your mothers. Get over yourselves.

 

[A Squared]

Well 670X, you're right, the arrogance here *is* overwhelming. The thing you likely don't grasp is that you're the primary source. I'll help you out a little with recognizing it, although I doubt that you'll pay any attention. That's OK, becuse there are other readers, and maybe they'll read it and resolve not to be like you, so it won't be entirely wasted.

Anyway, just this one line speaks volumes about you:

All you $1,400 a month SJS guys need to reply somewhere else. I'm looking for answers.

Right, now go back and point aout which are the $1400 SJS pilots. That that point in the thread, responses to your question were posted by:

414driver, who is/was in aerial fire supression and if he hasn't flown ag himself has flown with a lot of pilots with a lot of ag experience.

RightPedal, who has flown ag, and has family that has been in the ag business for decades.

Avbug who was flying ag when he was in his teens

Waldom, who was flying ag in stearmans, very likely before you were born.

Bugchaser, who has flown ag for 15 years

Nosehair. In all the years I've been reading his posts, I don't recall him mentioning flying ag, but I do know that he's been flying about as long as I've been alive, and I've got a pretty good start on my fourth decade, so he's not some fuzzy cheeked newbie.


So, could you please point out which particular posters you think are "$1400 SJS guys" ?

Right. Not a single one of them. Every one of them is in a postion to know far more than you about the ag business. yet you dismiss thier input, apparently because the answeres weren't the answers you wanted to hear.

There's a lesson in there someplace, but I suspect it will go whizzing right over your head. Perhaps some other readers will get it, and my time won't be wasted.

 

[gsrcrsx68]

There's a lesson in there someplace, but I suspect it will go whizzing right over your head. Perhaps some other readers will get it, and my time won't be wasted.

Here is one lesson, with as much respect as possible:
Nobody cares about how people did it 30 years ago, walked up hill both ways, it was a lot harder back then, yada, yada, yada. It really is that simple.

The guy ask for some facts about pay, if the guy wanted other sorts of opinions he would have asked.