AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2015 - 71

FLYING AT LOW ALTITUDE in the -3s no longer holds quite the risk it used to a decade
ago, either. Today the pilots fly an oval racetrack pattern and follow a cockpit-mounted
light bar to intercept and track each run.
The GUIA jumps to every seventh row,
allowing wide and gentle turns at each row
end; the GUIA is followed until the polygon
shows it's completely sprayed. (Helicopter
pilots, who often spray on day runs, still get
to do their signature steep, sliding turns and
fly row by row at 75 feet agl-woo hoo!)
The NVGs are another safety enhancement. "Those took some getting used to,"
said Lee Reed, senior pilot. "With the counterweight on the back of your helmet and
the NVGs clipped up front the system was
heavy, and that weight was fatiguing until
your neck muscles strengthened up." The
devices concentrate visible light and magnify its power by 6,000 percent, then project
the images onto a green phosphor screen
that is viewed through goggle-like lenses.
"I love what the NVGs do for the safety
of the flight," said Rita Maiss, a former Army
helicopter pilot who has been with LCMCD
since 2011. "This is extremely high risk, as
close as we come to mother Earth without
hitting anything. Anything that increases
safety in the operation is welcome," she said.
The NVGs require the pilots to fly at 350
feet; that's 50 feet higher than they had been
flying, and significantly higher than the old
bug bombers used to fly. The height increase
alone means they have a 42-percent lower
chance of hitting one of the numerous towers or power lines that prickle the peninsula.
A disadvantage of the NVGs is that they
don't "see" LED lighting well, which was a
problem until LCMCD petitioned to have
highly visible reflective tape added to every
tower in Lee County. Now towers literally
glow in the dark when hit with special belly
lights each LCMCD aircraft carries.
TO KEEP UP, LCMCD pilots train constantly.
O'Neal figures there have been years during the transition to the AG-Nav system and
the NVGs where the district's training flight
hours outnumbered actual application flight
hours. He's not worried about it, though.
"Those chemicals are expensive, and if you
waste them, that is wasted taxpayer dollars,"

he said. "Worse, you could misapply them
and they'd be dangerous. So spending the
time training and learning how to fly the aircraft properly, and the ground school hours
spent studying the GUIA, are justified."
"It takes so much practice to fly like
this-you look out at the line, find an object
on the horizon to track with, then inside at
the light bar, scanning in and out as you fly
the line," Reed explained. "It depends on
the pilot's experience as to how easy it is
to teach them."
It takes 100 hours of applicator experience and three challenging written
exams to earn an aerial applicator permit
in Florida (each state has its own requirements, and not all states offer reciprocity).
Pilots need to understand the toxicity of
the chemicals they carry, and exercise
exceptional judgment at all times. The
flight department also cross-trains all its
pilots, so helicopter pilots become fixedwing pilots and vice versa. This maximizes
the relatively small department's flexibility-and is part of the job's appeal.
Often, pilots are brought on part-time
to see if they'll work out before the district
commits to training them further.
Pilot Mike Vigus was flying for mosquito
control in Jacksonville, Florida, but after
attending the Florida Mosquito Control
Association's annual educational meeting in
Lee County he set his sights on a job there.
A former Army helicopter mechanic and
fixed-wing pilot, he has been cross-trained
to fly the helicopters and is the newest DC-3
type-rate pilot in the department.
"About half our pilots were Army aviators at one point," said O'Neal. A few, such
as Reed, have come up through the civilian
ranks, although most of these have aerial
application experience in their logbooks
before being hired by LCMCD.
At some point in the distant future, the
spraying may be seceded to autonomous
drones-maybe when surplus Predators
become available. Until then, the pilots
and LCMCD staff are heroes to county residents-even those who aren't aware they're
up there.
AOPA
AMY LABODA is a freelance writer living in
southwest Florida.
www.aopa.org/pilot AOPA PILOT | 71
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2015

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