Aerial ballet
Crop duster aviates above agricultural communityell 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, hovering 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
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