Ag Pilot/Crop Duster "Day in the life of"

good morning and welcome back everyone well today is the day I take you along for a day in the life of the crop duster it's our last day spraying in this region so I figured I'd better get it you gotta get it done pretty quick so I've been flying this AG cat turbine cat with Petey 6-30 for for the past week or so the boss let me fly his airplane while mines down for maintenance while it gets ready for the trip to Iowa yeah let's just jump right to it I got a couple hundred acres to spray today's all shots in the last couple of days but uh 6:00 in the morning I've been up since 5:00 a.m. checking whether kind of seen how things are gonna go I'm spraying a bit of a pesticide today or bug juice YUM to uh spray for a fence so let's do it [Music] so today's a little bit unique for me we are not operating out of Colfax where the airplane is based and where I live I'm going to ferry the plane about 15 miles over to Palouse Idaho Palouse Washington right on that Washington Idaho border the reason we do this is because the fields are spread out all over the place really in this whole region like in a 50-mile square circle and square circle yeah I said that anyway fields are all over the place and if I have a long ferry to each field the plane only takes an hour and a half worth of fuel and then I get into the field and start working for I don't know 15 20 minutes and I can be loaded on fuel so we have to operate out of strips that are closer to the fields so the field I'm working out of is Hoffman's field today it's got a cool little dogleg landing runway I don't typically land on it with the egghead cuz I'm still new at it but I do take off on it today we have a east wind so it's gonna be a bit of a downwind takeoff that's one thing as a crop duster you learn to act pilot you learn really quickly that you have to land in all sorts of conditions whether it be a headwind tail and quartering tailwind my least favorite a quartering headwind straight crosswinds we do it all as long as it's less than about 12 to 15 miles per hour wind we're flying depends also what we're spraying because the best way to minimize the drift or wear our product when we spray it out can drift into roads and houses and stuff is to be one closest to the crop as possible and then to do it when it's not super windy and that's a big important thing so every morning I wake up and have to check the wind but the wind is calm and out of the east this morning so I can go border up a field I did yesterday and then start on this other field that's up in the hills which should be interesting oh I give you guys just a little view of the cockpit maybe see take you to my office you know that you guys get a good understanding of what this thing is all about you can see it's quite a big airplane much prettier than the old little bird biplane I'd never flown a biplane before super rad yes brave boom that's how the whole thing works just crawl up in here into this monster so we got the hopper this is where we put the product liquid fertilizer right now our liquid fungicide that sort of thing mostly water but there's a little bit of chemical involved yeah I just crawl up in here without falling down I just put Jedi on the wing filling it up for the morning yeah in the house in the office I'm just gonna flip this around kind of see what's going on it's a little hard but got like important engine information over here on this side prop rpm in one or the gas generator speed how much torque I'm putting on the engine internal temperature pressure fuel pressure those sort of things voltage this is the readout display or the interactive display and keypad for the GPS which sets me up in the field you can kind of see there's a window here this is so I can see in the hopper and see how much product I have left when I need to leave the field and go get a refill the money ash the handles on the left side so fly the stick with the right hand and operate the flight controls the left hand throttle propeller condition lever of fuel selector valve this is the spray handle for liquid this is the gate handle for dry or to do an emergency dump or we call this one the chicken handle if I got in a situation where I couldn't out climb a hill I just push this one forward drops my whole load then I have to fill out a bunch of paperwork stick pretty standard it's got some buttons on it kind of cool this one advances my swath on the GPS this one lays smoke we've got some buttons on the front you can't see here that trigger the flagging system which is that little box out there here's what it does when I push a button it drops a little piece of toilet paper so I can see where in the field I I need to put a marker of some sort now you can see kind of that out there the light bar you'll see it in a lot of other videos because plane will be on but that basically is how I can keep my head outside of the cockpit and see where I'm going analyze me if there's a line across the top that's the distance from this straight line swath that I want and the GPA or the LED light on the bottom is my intercept course to that line so the idea is that you just kind of bring both in the center at the same time and you see three yellow lights but yeah anyway that's kind of my office it's got a good view out of it when the doors all shut I kind of show you pop lid comes in other window it's quite tight for one person it's just what it's made for but like you can see outside I just got a really great visibility and because I am sitting on the ground the visibility out the nose is not so good which I'm kind of used to with my model for but it's really not bad let's get used to flying it it's pretty cool but uh yeah let's go for a day of work [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] alright thanks for following along guys that was a good day at work unfortunately we are done here in Colfax for the season so I'm gonna take this baby down to the mechanic you know it worked on pick up the brave which I have to take to Iowa in a week and go do that corn run in Iowa hope you guys got to kind of see what goes into the life or the day of a AG pilot and his loader yeah it's been a pretty fun kind of hard to show you guys around but I was kind of fun to set up some cameras on the plane and actually see what I'm doing from outsider's perspective as well like I said I'm heading to Iowa I'll probably make it flight vlog they're showing you the difference in terrain the corn there and yeah so and you guys know the drill hit that like button if you did subscribe if you haven't and we'll see you on the next vlog

Channel: Scott Palmer

Views: 1,618,830

Rating: 4.9038143 out of 5

Keywords: flying, cropdusting, tailwheel, agpilot, Palouse, topdressing, airplane, biplane

Id: 8eE9ViW1ohs

Length: 15min 34sec (934 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 23 2019