Crop Dusters and Power Lines

Testimony of James Jennings of Farmers Aerial Applicators, Ontario, OR, to the Oregon House Sustainability and Economic Development Committee April 9th, 2009: Thank you for the opportunity to testify on Oregon House Bill 3153. . . We are a small two airplane operation which employs two pilots year round and up to six other people on a seasonal basis. We are based at the Ontario airport and most of our customers are located in the Ontario, Nyssa, and Vale areas . . .At the start of the row crop spraying season, the plants are small and can be treated with ground sprayers if necessary. As the plants mature, they "close over the row" and a ground sprayer can't get through the field without running over the foliage.This is where the airplane comes in. We don't touch the foliage and can spray even if the field is wet. So during this period, aircraft are almost exclusively used for applying pesticides to these crops. It is necessary for us to be able to get good coverage of these fields. . . because the pests we miss eradicating can multiply and reinfest the whole field in a surprising short amount of time. . . The more obstacles there are in the vicinity, or actually in the field, the more difficult it is to get good coverage. Your normal (50 ft) power line that you may see running along the side of the road is one thing, and we can usually deal with them. But this 500 kV line with 195 foot tall towers is a whole other thing . . .In our day-to-day operations we have, on occasion, had a closer encounter with a power line . . . this 500 kV line, however, has wires that are 18" in diameter as I understand it. If an airplane hits one, the airplane will be destroyed, and probably the pilot too.When dealing with a field that has a powerline running through it, there are basically two ways to go. One can fly the field parallel to the line or perpendicular to the line.If parallel to the line, then we have to solve the problem of how to get material on the part of the field directly under the wires in between towers.If perpendicular, we can go under the wires, but what happens when we get to a support tower? The options are to pull up out of the field early and climb over the tower, or side-slip past the tower and go under the wire. Either one of these maneuvers will require a pullout and circle around to restart our pass on the other side of the tower.Here we have the same two choices: Go back under the wire and side-slip back onto course which is very difficult to accomplish, or come over the top of the tower and dive back down onto the field on course.The downside is we don't want to spray the whole countryside by leaving the spray on as we climb/descend the 200 feet needed to clear the tower. Either way, we will have to come in and clean up around the towers by making short passes near the base of the tower to be sure we have coverage there.A possibly worse situation is when the field is near this power line. The power line acts like a big airplane fence. It will restrict our room to maneuver. Sometimes we get very focused on the field we are spraying and its environs because we are looking for problems, like people that appear out of nowhere or watching where the spray drift is going, instead of looking to see what is in front of the airplane as we are turning. It can be very easy to miscalculate the wind as one is turning and get blown right into an obstacle such as this power line. To read more from this article, click here : http://stopidahopower.blogspot.com/