Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Pond Boss Crop Duster at 6 A.M. Sunday morning

Nothing like the smell of napalm (pestcides) in the morning on your breakfast.

I love to watch crop dusters. There was one here about two weeks ago, spraying the field up the road a ways. After he (or she) made a pass he would bank right over our house.... He was so low, I felt like if I were to look hard enough I could determine the orifice size in the spray bar he/she was using.

That looks like such an awesome ride! But then again, I've never flown in anything, so it probably wouldn't take much to impress me.

Omaha, someone was doing some serious crop dusting in the Charlotte airport yesterday!!!

Haha! That is unfortunate!

Looks like it could be dangerous if you got distracted by AAA fire.

Or I could hire some chick to lay out naked and no more crop duster.

Yeah, but then I think you'd have bigger problems on your hands from the other member of your household.

She wouldn't even notice. It took her two weeks to notice i was raising fish in the basement.

I'm gonna take a shot in the dark here but I bet she'd notice a naked chick in her territory a LOT faster than some additional water breathers in her basement...

Methinks so too!

Well if you use naked chicks, you won't have one crop duster, you will have a sky full of airplanes and helicopters, and they won't leave until the girls do!!! Trust me.......

Huh?

When I incubate eggs, all my young chicks come out with yellow feathers covering their little bodies!

Time to go feed the adults!

Crop dusters I hate, those huge skinny tired spray rigs should be the only thing legal. Crop dusters are cool too watch sprkplug for about the first 20-30 minutes weeks of spraying in the area gets old fast.. They are loud, can't be efficient, and the drift off them shouldn't be legal..

Indiana used to have a summer nudist colony on lake Freeman. No idea if it's still there. A biologist was telling me they would perodically electroshock the reservoir. They would always slow down when they came around a point on tbe beach. It was out of safety concerns of course.

Let us know how you really feel.

Not during the school year. Leaves the house before daylight and comes home after dark. Very dedicated teacher. Then crashes until the following morning.

Sounds like a Winged Sprint on Friday nights.........

Ground-sprayers can't go everywhere, especially in muddy conditions, and they're no where nearly as efficient as aerial applications. Also, pesticide off-target drift (ground or aerial) isn't legal, anywhere - period! Most applicators use a polymer drift-control additive to "thicken" the spray-solution - which reduces or eliminates aerosol particles that are otherwise prone to physical drift. That doesn't mean that odor-drift is always avoidable.
Besides common decency, courtesy and concern for others, it is vital to an applicator's livelihood to take every precaution to guard against physical drift - for obvious reasons - and that means a lot of take-offs at the first crack of daylight.
This aerial applicator was able to treat 170 acres of cattails, lotus and mature willows in less than 20 minutes; without any harm to trees on the other sides of the levee. It would've taken days to do an inferior job with a boat-application.

The members on this sight seem to have more common sense than anywhere on the web. I guess that common sense is not as common as it used to be.

cool photo Kelly!

Casual viewing doesn't reveal how much skill most aerial applicators possess, especially the ones who remain alive throughout their career.
Also, technology in equipment has advanced by leaps and bounds since the "old days".
For instances, most aerial applicators use GPS guidance to track their swath-paths, to ensure even coverage. A light-bar above the panel tells the pilot to slip left or right if he's slightly off course for each sequential swath. That's a big advance since the days of "flaggers" on the ground (usually high school kids), who held up flags to visually line up the pilot's approach.
Even the simple concept of a "smoker" (indicated by the arrow in the uppermost photo below) represents a huge advance toward drift-management. This device allows the pilot to "puff smoke" every few passes. The movement of the smoke - if any - conveys real-time wind conditions (speed, direction, etc). The first time I saw a smoker in use, I thought the plane's engine was about to throw a piston.

Good point on the smoke and amazing pictures Kelly! Many people don't realize just how fast wind conditions change, and just by having a line of trees at one end of the field or partly down one side can change wind patterns, no matter how low the wind velocity is.

Kelly, why are the first two so high? The third guy seems about the right height.

On a funny note I had an uncle that was a farmer and a real tightwad. Anyway a crop duster mistakenly sprayed his field when he hadn't requested it. My uncle was smiling from ear to ear because he didn't have to pay for it.

Sometimes you can't always get in a field with a spray rig on tires. Many of them are very careful about drift anymore. Our local crop duster is very gun shy.