Anyone know what crop dusting pays?????

[Waldom]

Bravo, Bugchaser. Thats the most accurate description of the profession I've ever read.

As I"ve said before, you will be much more effective in the job if you think of yourself as an agricultural worker who's equipment happens to fly than a pilot that does ag work.

I would like to add that, for all the reasons you just stated, cropdusting provides the most job satisfaction of any flying job I've ever had.

 

[gsrcrsx68]

Bugchaser...and Waldom, sounds like farm work, just in a plane. That was a great description and I'll remeber it for a long time as it rings so true. Nice post.

 

[Simon Says]

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.

Let me see how I can answer these questions...no, no, that would suck, no, no, no, I would never do that, that sucks even harder, no, no, no, no....YES, Hey I have had a bird in my cockpit before!!!!!

AG flying sounds like a living he!!. And for all of you part 121 guys out there. A trained monkey can do what we do.

 

[avbug]

That's really the point, isn't it? Everybody thinks it's a weekend lark. Something they can do when they retire. It's not. In fact, the longer you spend in an airline or corporate seat, the less and less qualified you become, and certainly the less marketable you become, to do that kind of work.

Yes, a chimpanzee probably could be trained to operate an airliner in many cases, and the use of 200 and 300 hour pilots around the globe (and increasingly in the US, too) to do it is evidence enough of that.

Ag flying isn't a living hell at all. That you think it is a living hell is evidence that you don't belong there, and don't see through the eyes that will put you there...which is just as well...if you think those things are negatives, then you probably wouldn't survive that all important first season. Like many others haven't.

Not everyone sees those things as negatives. Personally, I like the smell of the chemicals, and I like the smell of smoke in the cockpit. I like an airplane that requires me to fly it, rather than manage it. I like being close to terrain and obstacles, I like to feel that my flying skills are being put to good use rather than rusting. I do find that when sitting in a highly automated cockpit for any length of time, my skills and abilities slowly deteriorate, and jumping back into an ag cockpit again, it clearly shows.

What you're reading about here is work. Ag flying is work. Not a lark, not a joyride. It's work, and that's why pilots of certain backgrounds as a whole tend to not do so well...generally speaking, they don't like to work. They tend to feel they're above washing the airplane, working on the airplane, sweating, being dirty a lot, mixing hazardus materials and chemicals by hand, inspecting insects and crops...the white shirt and epaulette crowd doesn't usually like to get their hands dirty, and as a result, they don't do well at a utility working job like flying ag. Add to it flying at night, and they cringe...the thought of diving into a set of powerlines and an unlighted field in the dark in a heavily loaded, performance-limited airplane rightfully scares them.

If you don't like what you hear, that's really tough. It's the truth.

 

[bugchaser]

You are right Avbug, and the longer you sit out, the harder it is to get back in. I'm finding that each time I hop back into an Ag airplane, it seems more and more awkward to me. I recently got into an airplane that I have flown for many thousands of hours and it felt like I had never flown it before. It is definitely not something that you want to do part time. That's why I have decided to not do any more Ag work. I have lots of opportunities to jump in and fly some loads, but I think that it is best to leave it to those that are doing it full time. Maybe the airline job has made me soft? I know one thing, after all those years of cruising around and looking out the window down low I sure don't mind those 7 legs and 25 min turns at SW. Pretty easy work from my perspective.

Avbug, what are you doing this season? Fire SEAT or Ag work? Whatever, I hope your year turns out well.

 

[avbug]

I just got married this weekend, which has moved plans around a lot (rightfully so, of course), but I was supposed to be in a thrush and a Cat right now. However, for now I'm planning on holding off, trying to squeeze a honeymoon in here, and then hitting the fire season in a turbine Dromader this year. All things being equal, I plan on making this my last. I may transition over to an OV-10 later this year, depending on a lot of things presently.

That transition back and forth seems to get tougher each time. The last few times I jumped out of a Lear or something similiar right into the ag airplane, and was bouncing back and forth all season.

 

[bugchaser]

Well congrats! Hope you have a good season this year.

 

[AlbieF15]

Bug,

How do the guys there like the OV-10? It was my first mount out of UPT, and although I didn't have much to compare it to I always thought it was a pretty fun plane to fly. It could induce nausea, however, better than about any other plane I ever flew with its heat and vibration. Incentive riders used to get sick with regularity.

 

[avbug]

You were probably flying the A model...these are the D models with some upgrades and changes, and a lot more armor.

I believe most find it a popular ride, but it's all about the paycheck.