Anyone know what crop dusting pays?????

[svcta]

OK, I guess I'm at a loss here, your question about where to go to find out the pay suggests you didn't see that the question was answered, but you say you did read it......???? OK, not important I guess.

Yes, and I deliberately waited until the answer had been delivered before commenting.


Moving on.....

 

[670X]

WOW..........

I'm speechless...First time ever.


I'm sorry does that sound arrogant?

 

[inline]

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.

Pick the "aviation flying career" and YOU have ALL the answers! Your contempt for airline pilots is obvious ( because you've never done it, right?) yessir, the all-knowing windbag av-bug has the answer!

 

[avbug]

You've come here to contribute to the thread then, have you? Very well then.

Ag I've been doing since high school, so yes, I do have a little experience there. High School was a long time ago, mate.

Airline, cargo, corporate, fractional...yes. I do have experience. However, I don't believe I expressed any contempt here. Flying point to point in a nice tidy white shirt, in a narrow sliver of the operational envelope with an aircraft that has considerable performance on one engine, let alone two and a suite of avionics to do one's job for one...is not at all the same as operating an ag airplane.

I've consistantly seen two trouble areas with pilots coming into ag and fire; airline pilots and military pilots. Both have been the biggest source of trouble for most operators with which I have been involved. One operator for whom I flew wouldn't hire pilots with military experience or with airline experience, based on several decades of experience with them. This, even though the owner, president, vice president, and chief pilot were all former career military. The policy was their idea, based on their personal experience with airline and military in the operation.

Call it what you will, hotshot, but best yet, rush out and get someone to hire you in an ag seat. Survive a season or two without a drift claim, crash, or losing your life back, then post your depth of experience on this subject when you resurrect the thread.

Until that time, you might try offering something on the subject that's relevant to the thread at hand.

 

[Waldom]

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.

My response was an attempt to keep someone who appeared to think he was bullet-proof alive.

 

[aucfi]

Flying point to point in a nice tidy white shirt, in a narrow sliver of the operational envelope with an aircraft that has considerable performance on one engine, let alone two and a suite of avionics to do one's job for one...is not at all the same as operating an ag airplane.

Pretty much describes why I will never go to the regionals or other airlines. I enjoy my smelly old Shorts with its /A and no autopilot. I enjoy flying.

 

[svcta]

Well, my dad can beat up your dads.

 

[svcta]

double post. Stupid hotel connections. Bet my dad can beat up this hotel connection, too.

 

[AlbieF15]

Pardon me, but it does look fun as hell. I also understand how easy it could be to end your life and career with a moments inattention.

 

[bugchaser]

Hey Albie, it is fun. Sometimes. First load in the morning and last one at night. All the rest is just a grind. One of the problems with Ag flying is that everyone thinks that it looks like fun. Guys that have been there and done that, try to tell the real story and it comes across pretty negative to the wannabe guys. I think that while most guys that do this enjoy the hands on type of flying, most will also tell you that it is by far the hardest work they have ever done. It is very hard to tell someone what this job is like without being somewhat negative. There are lots of negatives to talk about. Some make lots of money. Some die way too young. Many struggle to pay their bills. And a very few have a good career and retire happy. Not trying to be negative, just stating the facts. As for flying skill, I suppose you have to have a little natural ability, but I have always thought that anyone can learn how to fly good enough to spray. Very few however will ever be good applicators. Flying the airplane is a small part of the job. I guess the best thing you could do to see if you would like it is go get a Cessna 150 or something like that and tape up all the air vents. Wait of a nice windy day when its up in the 90's and start flying right before dawn. Go fly around doing ground reference maneuvers, stalls, lazy eights, whatever. Land every hour and top off the gas. Don't stay on the ground longer than 5 min if possible. Keep doing this all day until the sun sets. Give yourself 10 min on the ground at lunch time so that you can grab a sandwich to eat in the air. If you want to get even more realistic, try to do a couple of crossword puzzles while flying to simulate all the paperwork you'll have to do during the day. And maybe leave the carb heat on or run on one mag to better get a feel for an overloaded, underpowered airplane. Again, not trying to be negative, but that is the reality of an ag pilots life. Now do this for 7 days straight and let us know what you think. Thats pretty much what it takes. Only you'll be doing it everyday, all summer. Trust me, after a few 80+ hour weeks, you won't care how much money your making or how much fun your having. Most people just have no idea what it's like to fly that hard for that many days back to back. It's true that not all ag pilots fly that hard, but you will have to if you want to make the big bucks. Avbug and the others are just trying to give you the facts. Either listen to us or find out for yourself. I loved parts of the ag job, but there is no way that I could have physically kept up the pace necessary to provide a decent living for my family. Thanks to some good fortune and even a little advice from Albie, I'm pretty happy touring America in a 737.