Hooked on flying
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| Crop duster Luke Heaton of Princeton takes a pass over a local field. Ever since he was a young boy, Heaton has dreamed of piloting his own crop duster. Today, he flies for R & R Flight Services, an agricultural aviation company in Mendota. Heaton said crop dusting makes for long days — often getting up at 4:30 a.m and getting home as late as 10 p.m. (Photo contributed) |
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When it comes to childhood dreams, the sky is the limit, and that’s just where you’ll find crop duster Luke Heaton these days.
“My interest in flying began when I was young. I would climb up on our grain bins and watch the planes as they sprayed in the area,” said Heaton of Princeton. “In my eyes, that was my dream job.”
Heaton now flies for R & R Flight Service, an agricultural aviation company based in Mendota. The company sprays fields for farms and co-ops which span a 30- to 40-mile radius. The majority of chemicals sprayed are fungicides, while later in the season, some insecticides are put onto fields. Don Younglove runs the aerial application company, along with his father, Lyle, who started the business in 1978.
Through later July and early August, Heaton said there’s a two to three week period that crop dusters in north-central Illinois consider their busy season.
“I was getting up at 4:30 in the morning and getting home at 9:30 or 10 at night, working seven days a week,” said Heaton. “When you’re doing some of this work, there’s a short window when it can be sprayed, so it all just comes in at once. You just try to keep up and get as much done when you can, when you have good weather to do it.”
Staying alert while flying during the busy season is a concern for agricultural pilots.
“You gotta keep people around you, and you yourself have to be able to recognize if you’re starting to drag or you’re starting to slip a little bit. (If you are, you) take yourself out of the airplane and go do something for a couple of hours – take a nap or just relax and not think about flying,” said Heaton. “And you drink lots of Red Bull.”
During his college years at University of Illinois where he studied agricultural business and farm management, Heaton began taking flying lessons.
“I kind of just flew on the side throughout college,” said Heaton. “After I graduated, I moved to the Quad Cities and got my instrument and commercial license.”
Heaton then attended Flying Tiger Aviation, an agricultural flying school in Oak Ridge, La., where he studied topics pertinent to crop dusting such as tail wheel training, flight maneuvers, stalls, GPS training, emergency situations, proper turning techniques, aerodynamics, meteorology, chemical training, entering and exiting fields, and operating around towers and power lines.
Upon finishing his course work at Flying Tiger Aviation, Heaton received a certificate of completion and a Part 137 Logbook endorsement pertaining to agricultural aircraft operations.
From there, Heaton said he began networking.
“I had been going to a lot of crop-dusting seminars to get my foot in the door, meet people, and it just happened to work out that I met Don (of R & R Flight Service) there,” said Heaton. “He was looking for a pilot, and it was close to home, so it worked out really well.”
Heaton has now been flying for six years and working for R & R Flight Service for two. Prior to working as an aerial applicator, he flew for a sky diving company based in Geneseo.
Multi-tasking is an important part of crop dusting, according to Heaton.
“Flying the airplane, checking engine instruments, checking boom pressure, checking nozzles to make sure none are plugged, flying the lightbar (GPS which guides you from pass-to-pass in the field), locating and judging obstacles,” Heaton said are all things that the pilot needs to be aware of when crop dusting.
Heaton described crop dusting as “very active” flying, requiring the pilot to be constantly attentive, as to avoid the potential dangers of the profession.
Turns are one of the biggest dangers in agricultural flying, Heaton said.
“Guys are often pressured to keep turns as tight as possible because it makes the operator and pilot more money because more acres are sprayed and less fuel is burned,” said Heaton. “I think every pilot in this occupation has close calls, but you learn from every mistake and realize it’s important to avoid risk whenever you can, even if it means taking extra time to accomplish a task.”
Maintenance is also a vital part of agricultural aviation. Heaton, who flies a Cessna 188 when crop dusting, said if planes are down during the high season, the company loses a significant amount of money.
Each plane is looked over by the pilot prior to flight and undergoes an inspection every 100 hours, along with annual inspections. R & R Flight Service sends its planes with turbine engines off-site for inspection and maintenance.
At the end of the day, Heaton says he enjoys crop dusting because of his love of flying and the adrenaline rush it brings.
“It’s really active flying, and you have to be in a stage of high alert, always know what’s going on,” said Heaton. “It’s never boring. Once you do it, you’re hooked.”
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