Agricultural Flying (Crop dusting) as a career
- Thread starter twotwowoo
- Start date
sundog
Well-Known Member
sundog
Well-Known Member
see also http://sprayplane.net/forum/
http://www.agaviation.org/
http://www.agairupdate.com/
and https://sites.google.com/a/family.c...loads/Ag_training_Plan.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1
This is a agricultural products and pesticide application job, which just happens to use a very specialized piece of equipment (airplane) that very few people are qualified to operate. The actual flying is really just a small part of the job. This is why almost every operator will want you to work on the ground a season or two before getting into an airplane. sure, you need a lot of tailwheel time (a lot of tailwheel landings, not just a bunch of long cross country flights) but you also need to know how to deal with various crop protection products, about spray patterns, droplet size and the effect on drift, how to identify different crops from the air, and a whole lot about which products can be mixed together and which products for which pests on which crops.
In addition to the FAA commercial license and part 137 endorsement, you need to have a state pesticide applicator license. each state is a little different, but usually there will be a core license, plus endorsements for herbicides (weeds), disease (fungicide), and insects. sometimes there are separate endorsements for insects affecting crops and insects affecting man (mosquitos, ticks, flies, etc.). there will be another endorsement for aerial application. there is yet another for spraying public right-of-ways. I had to take and pass 5 tests in all for Wyoming.
as for the pay: this job can be compared to commercial fishing. we work very hard and very long hours for a short season, usually away from our families the whole time. It can be quite dangerous, about like commercial fishing. also, we usually get paid a percentage of what our airplane makes, so there are good years and bad years, almost unpredictable and completely based on the weather and the price of farm commodities.