Combining Art, Science and Daredevil Skills

By Ryan Fulgham
The Leader

Screaming along at speeds of over one hundred fifty miles per hour merely ten feet off of the ground is not a place many people like to picture themselves.

In fact, a very small percentage of pilots have ever flown such stunts.

American crop dusters have combined art and science to create a thrilling agricultural vocation that has spanned nearly a century.

Since John Macready dumped a load on an Ohio orchard in 1921, aviators near agriculture have made lives for themselves flying specially designed or modified planes like that World War I surplus Curtiss JN-6H Jenny.

Whip-smart and mechanically minded farmers immediately saw the incredible potential of aerial application.

Those early days of dusting were often hazardous for pilots.
“Lightweight airplanes with weak frames were modified for use as crop-dusters—sturdily built World War II surplus aircraft with improved pilot visibility were soon transformed into crop dusters,” wrote Roger Guillemette of the U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission.

Nearly every pilot trained for flight in World War II earned his wings in either the Boeing/Stearman Model 75 Kaydet or the Piper J-3 Cub. After 1945, over ten thousand of these planes were sold for as little as two hundred fifty dollars; and many farmers and aviators began spraying crops in reinforced and souped-up versions of these airplanes.
Close to ninety percent of American agricultural aviators still in the business have been flying for over twenty years.
Several in the Delta have been soaring for thirty years plus.

Eddie Roach of Dublin started flying in 1974, “because I was watching these old guys around here jump up and down under the wires and over the trees.”

A lot of these old guys were farm boys returning from the war who had become first-flight fanatics.

“When you first start flying you feel like you’re never gonna grow old, and you’re never gonna die,” Roach proclaimed.

In fact, most pilots of the day were war veterans who had received combat training in extremely maneuverable aircraft. These doughboys formed the first generation of chemical cowboys.

First generation ag-pilots taught the amateur, second-generation fliers of Bolivar County. In an era nearly devoid of licenses and regulations, apprenticeships conveyed the necessary skills. Farmers aiming for greater yields picked up and refitted old airplanes for less than one thousand dollars. The cultivators who tried their hands at aerial acrobatics turned to the past dogfighters for lessons.

During the late sixties and early seventies, an abundance of mechanically savvy men who had yet to log an hour of airtime loaded up and took off to dust long swaths of Mississippi farmland. Old sky salts would bark orders at the newly airborne pilots from the back seats of Stearman biplanes. In the minds of these novice farmer-pilots, the practicality of aerial application was the purpose for risking such dangerous training endeavors. Their learning experiences, however, were mixtures of abstraction and structure.

Fly-by-night methodology developed crop dusting into a mystical hybrid of art and science at this stage.
Mississippi agricultural aviator Gene Jones began flying in 1979. He has flown for Maxwell Flying Service in Benoit since 1983. Growing up in Morehead, Mississippi, Jones, like many Mississippi boys, marveled at the crop dusters above as he labored on a farm. Edgar Hobbes, a crop duster friend of Jones’ father, invited him along for a first chance in the air.

“Flying in his little Super Cub, he basically taught me how to fly,” Jones recalled.

In many ways the business was then as it is now.

Crop dusting is largely seasonal with peak business periods during June, July, and August.

“There’s usually something happening except in December,” Ag-Pilot Jones said.

Business can even change from day-to-day or hour-to-hour due to the immense effects weather has on a crop duster’s ability to spray or even get off of the ground. “Ideal weather would be winds less than five miles per hour, a temperature of less than seventy degrees, and low humidity,” Jones informed.

On-board computers still use, “the same few mathematical formulas for determining the length of the field, the acres attached, the distance, and stuff like that that we did,” Eddie Roach related.

Roach owned and flew for Roach Flying Service in Rome, Mississippi, for the last fifteen years of his crop dusting career. He retains a die-hard attachment to the old radial engine Thrushes, Ag-Cats, and Air-Tractors that he flew from the start.

He pointed out, “Regulations made the profession a little less palatable. This used to be the best job in the world until regulations,” Roach said.

Roach does see a lot of the new oversight laws as good and necessary, however.

“The cost of fuel actually made me quit,” Roach admitted. With plane operations running two hundred dollars an hour and leaded eighty-octane fuel for radial engines no longer available, who could blame him?

Today aerial application incorporates a miasma of modern technology.

Chemical cowboys of the Delta streak the skies in veritable rocket ships equipped with global positioning systems, geographical information systems, flow controls, real-time meteorological systems, and precisely calibrated spray equipment to maintain accuracy and safety.

Crop dusters of now are Ayres Turbo-Thrushes or Air-Tractor Turbo AT400s, turbine engine equipped workhorses all specifically designed for agricultural aviation.

Times have certainly changed. Planes are faster and more powerful, new technology is pervasive, and soaring input costs are incomparable to those of the crop dusting days of yore.

However, as Gene Jones at Maxwell Flying Service put it, “There will always be a place for airplanes.” Crop dusting remains the safest, fastest, most efficient, and most economical method to apply fertilizers and pesticides.

“Some of the new stuff was trifling, but for the most part I loved it for over thirty years,” Eddie Roach reflected.
Living in the Delta, you have probably heard an unnatural buzzing in the air somewhere. Maybe you’ve noticed a shadow slide over your path while speeding down the highway. Perhaps you’ve even invented an ill-fated accident for yourself and a mechanical condor that was coming right for you.

Next time, remember those chemical cowboys up there, riding the Mississippi skies.

They are the torchbearers of a one hundred year old tradition, doing their part to advance the culture and economy of the Mississippi Delta.