Montrose - Daily Press

OLATHE — Many of yesterday’s cultural prototypes drop from the radar as the face of American agriculture evolves. Some change.

Land is sold, subdivisions grow and pastures are replaced with structures.

Leonard Felix, 62, has witnessed such changes from a bird’s eye view. He’s spent 38 seasons as an aerial applicator — today’s definition of crop duster. With his family, he runs Olathe Spray Service.

(Use arrows above to view more photos) Advertisement

His industry last peaked in the late 70s and early 80s with more than 10 operators on the Western Slope.

“At one time there were four of us in this valley,” Felix said. “Now there’s only four in the whole Western Slope.”

Customers have dwindled in the past couple decades. And the danger has increased.

“Today with the smaller fields and the proximity to houses you’re just not allowed any room for error,” he said. “And also here it’s a lot tougher because of all the obstacles and because of not just houses but power lines, trees.”

But Felix’s family isn’t going hungry. There’s work nearly year round and it doesn’t all regard agriculture. His planes and helicopters serve to kill mosquitos and unwanted fish, plant and kill sagebrush and aspens — depending on the application, and even locate collared animals.

“This is a crazy business,” Felix said. “You know, there’s all kinds of label restrictions about staying away from water and not killing fish, and yet I’ve went into some areas and worked for the (Department of Wildlife) putting rotenone in the water to kill the trash fish.

“You know, they’ve fished out everything else so now they got me out here spraying this lake to kill the fish — but the day before I was spraying a field where we couldn’t spray anywhere near the water cause it might kill fish.”

He said once unwanted fish are removed from the former situation, the water is neutralized and restocked with game fish like trout.

Other applications include spraying 350 miles of ditches for the Uncompahgre water users to hold the ditches back, as well as locating lost livestock.

Felix said sometimes changes predicted to hurt his business actually help it.

“Every time there’s one of these things come along and you think it’s really gonna bite you — you know, they start talking about organics and that’s gonna take us out of the business — we helped one of our sweet corn growers this year grow organic sweet corn and because of the products that are available we actually spray that more than the other corn.”

One of his business’s three aircraft is now dedicated solely to organic sprays to avoid cross contamination.

“There’s opportunity there as long as you’re willing to meet the challenges.”

Technological obstacles

For the aerial applicator, challenges manifest not just in clientele but application as well. Felix said the proper distance from his sprayer to the ground is about 12 feet for general application.

“And that’s boom height so you’ve got the gear handing down below that so you’re a little lower than that, you know, going across the field,” Felix said.

He sprays a 10-acre field at 130 mph in 3.5 seconds. It is important to beware of power lines. Felix said there were formerly several poorly placed lines known as “widowmakers” that would run, for example, from one group of trees to another.

“You can’t see the wires and you come roaring down through there and there’s a wire. What are you gonna do? You just hit it.”

He said the damage is most often to the propeller but that wires can get hung up on gear as well. Typically the aircraft’s momentum will snap the line — unless it’s a big wire.

Felix related a story of a time when new wire had been raised near a river bank and he didn’t discover it far enough in advance.

“I missed it with the prop somehow but it still caught on the gear and it starts pulling me around — and when it starts pulling me around then I finally pull hard enough over here I see this transformer blow up and the wire come loose.

“Then here comes the wire following right up with the airplane it comes screaming up the side of the wing, hit the fuselage and knocked nozzles off as it come and then — then it got hooked on the other side so then I start doing the tether the other way and it’s pulling me around and then I see, you know, crossarms breaking off and wire coming loose and transformers blowing — I got three transformers, I got 27 crossarms, two poles and I don’t know what else.”

All this transpired in about 10 seconds, he said.

“I brought most of it back with me, cause it was all dangling off the airplane. But they’re tough old birds and if you got a little luck with you it’ll bring you home.”

Felix said he’s never crashed.

“What you’re doing is you’re trying to fly the airplane,” he said of such precarious situations. “And at that point in time that’s your whole focus and that’s all you’re thinking about is making the airplane do what it will do to survive.”

He said there’s recently been a national effort to recruit more young aerial applicators but that it’s become a complicated vocation that leaves little room for mistakes. He has two pilot sons who fly for his business, one of which previously flew helicopters for the military.

Felix mentioned that skills for flying aerial application are similar to those of a fighter pilot. The planes are similar in that the flight is more unstable than commercial planes — this allows for increased maneuverability in tight spaces.

Horizons to come

As the crop duster’s classic persona maneuvers challenging turbulence, it emerges charged with versatility. There is confidence in the pilot’s words.

“We’re losing customers,” Felix said. But such a blow is cushioned by bigger, faster, more efficient planes with such gadgetry as GPS.

“We still get a lot of acres but we take in a lot more country now — it used to be small aircraft here in the valley. Now we do more acres but we gotta go farther to get to it.”

He won’t retire until he’s forced to do so, and there’s no limit as long as he can pass a physical. The oldest pilot is 102, he said.

Danny Tinnes, 38, aerial applicator and the Colorado representative for the National Agricultural Aviation Association, said it’s undeniable there are less people in agriculture than in the past, but that the industry as a whole will grow depending how farmers use their tools.

“We’ve all picked up the slack and we grow more fruit today than we ever did,” he said.

Tinnes lives in Lamar. He said renewable energy is catching on well on his side of the Rockies, and that windmills have replaced power lines in places.

“I think aerial application and the industry has a great future,” Tinnes said. He said there’s an increasing need for his services with regard to such challenges as deforestation.

The planes can drop seeds with more efficiency than ground rigs. In addition, fungicide technologies have developed such that certain crop yields increase significantly through correct applications.

“It’s almost like you’re taking a multivitamin — there’s certain times if you give it a shot of multivitamins, (its health improves),” he said. 

Tinnes said in 1990 there were 120 aerial application licenses in Colorado. Now there are 80.

“The scariest thing in the world is the planting of the last crop, and we call it asphalt, concrete, shingles,” Tinnes said. “But it’s a beautiful country — Colorado is — and we don’t want to keep anyone out.”

Contact Robert Allen via e-mail at roberta@montrosepress.com

Comments