Aerial ballet
Crop duster aviates above agricultural community
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"Well, I like to fly and I like farming and I just put the two together,” crop duster Mike Campbell notes.
Campbell, who runs Campbell Aviation with his wife Colleen, sits outside a mobile home just off the runway at the Ronan Airport. The trailer that faces east is not home, but it will do for the three or four days he works west of the Mission Mountains.
“Man, I love it,” he says. “Just look at the view. What a place.”
Campbell, who was born on a ranch outside Thompson Lakes, now lives across the Mission Mountains outside of Dutton. He sprays crops for hundreds of farmers on the eastern side of the mountain range and sprays Lake County’s farms with chemicals created to deter pests, fungi and weeds.
He sprays anything from wheat to potatoes, flying six feet above the ground at times and whipping up and turning quickly, keeping the much-needed chemicals on the fields and the pests off.
The Hollywood depiction of a drunk crop duster, flying with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and the yoke in the other, is an image that crop dusters are trying to move away from, Campbell explained.
He is a professional aerial applicator — the correct terminology for his profession — and one of 26 in the Association of Montana Aerial Applicators.
The state organization was formed to create a safety standard for aerial applicators and to improve the profession’s image.
They also discuss new methods to eliminate drift, which is quite a task when you are spraying chemicals from the air. But Campbell is confident in his work as he has the latest technology in nozzles, which assist in the endeavor.
Every day is like a mathematical equation, and Campbell works diligently to balance all the factors that contribute to the correct solution — healthy, pest-free crops.
When he stays in Dillon, he wakes up pre-dawn and flies over the mountain with the rising sun. At the small airport in Ronan, he mixes the chemicals — which could prove to be an occupational hazard, but he’s careful.
Aerial applicators can’t work in the middle of a summer day because the chemicals rise with the heat. So depending on the weather, Campbell sprays fields six to 10 hours every day in the morning and in the evening.
He ferries to the fields at about 200 feet before swooping down and spraying the crops evenly despite the varying terrain.
“Yeah, it’s a rush,” Campbell explained. “The hilly ground is harder to spray because you are trying to contour (to) it. The flat fields are kind of fun because they’re easier.”
Then he swings back to the airport to mix another load of chemicals. It’s usually about 15 degrees hotter in the cockpit than on the ground and to protect his skin from the chemicals he sprays, the aerial aviator wears long pants and a long-sleeved shirt.
Flying over the mountains at night is another hazard, and although Campbell admits to doing it a few times, he tries to stay in his makeshift airport lodging when it gets too late.
“You get tired and you want to do something different but that doesn’t last very long,” Campbell said.
Despite the hazards, danger, odd hours and the constant balancing of the aerial applicator equation, Campbell couldn’t imagine working in another occupation.
Campbell enjoys combining his two passions — farming and flying — and admires the farmers for their knowledge of the trade. And he sincerely desires the farmers to do well. Farming, like the economy, is cyclical by its nature.
The fate of the farmers could affect everyone.
“I know it’s only two percent of the economy but that’s still a good chunk of it,” Campbell said.
