Air Tractor Top Notch Operator:
Scott Petersen
Pontiac Flying Service
Pontiac, Illinois
AT: What is your background? How did you get into flying?
Petersen: I graduated high school in 1978 in Hershey, Nebraska. After high school, I got involved in aviation by working in a little repair shop called Hershey Flying Service I pushed a broom around the shop. That was my introduction to aviation.
One day, the lead mechanic there was looking for some help and asked me if I had any mechanical ability. I said “Yeah,” and he began showing me how things went back together and doing repairs. I got interested in flying and started taking flying lessons. I ended up going to A&P school at Western Nebraska Technical College in Sidney Nebraska, in 1979.
In 1981, I graduated with an associate’s degree in aviation maintenance technology and received my A&P license and my private pilot's license at that time. Went home and found that not much was going on in general aviation there. So, I enlisted in the Air Force and spent two years as an F-16 crew chief. I enjoyed that immensely. I came home after the Air Force and went back to work for a crop dusting operator in Curtis Nebraska. I fell in love with it. Those guys used to take me for rides in the Super Cub. I just really, really wanted to do it.
I kept flying and finally got my commercial and my instrument ratings in 1988. Then, I was out of aviation for awhile, in the trucking business with my Dad. But in 1996 I came to Illinois and enrolled in Harold Miller’s ag pilot course, and spent the summer there. I got my first flying seat and was working with Harold Miller in 1997.
The city of Pontiac ran an ad in the Chicago Tribune for an airport manager. Harold saw it and told me that he thought he’d found something for me, as I was looking for a place to start on my own. I came over to Pontiac and met with the city administrator and he showed me around the town. I saw that there really was no existing ag spraying business here, but I thought there was good potential.
I called my wife back in Nebraska and told her “I think we’re gonna move.” So she boxed everything up and we moved here in the middle of June. We arrived in Pontiac about midnight. At 10 a.m. the next morning, I was in a car traveling to West Virginia for a spray contract, leaving the wife and kids with everything to unload. I returned from the job about 10 days later. That was our introduction to Illinois.
We started out with a single Ag Cat, one that I purchased as a derelict plane and not flyable. My wife and I went up to Canada to get it in the winter of 1997. We took it apart, loaded it on a trailer and brought it home. Disassembled it, and went all through it and rebuilt the airplane and that was our first airplane that we started with.
AT: How has your operation changed over the years?
Petersen: Our first few years here were pretty bleak. We were a brand new business. I spent the first 2-3 years helping other operators who were busy with their business. I would travel wherever I needed to. I also worked some with Harold Miller on some gypsy moth contracts.
In 2002 things changed. Things started picking up here locally. We bought our first turbine airplane, an Air Tractor. I did a lot of spraying. In 2003 we had our first big bug run and we ended up with 5 airplanes working here in Pontiac during the month of August. Word had gotten out that we were here, and that we were an established business. One of the things we pride ourselves in is providing good service with good quality of work. People kinda got used to calling us and knew that we did a good job.
So our business has grown from almost starving the first couple of years to 2005, when we added another AT-502. And this spring, 2006, we added a third AT-502. We travel this area in a 50-60 mile radius of where we typically work. We’ll travel and set up at other airports if we need to.
AT: How are your airplanes equipped?
Petersen: We’re currently operate two 502s and one 502B. They are all equipped with -34 Pratt & Whitneys. All three are equipped with M3 Satloc, and have GPS-Coms, and transponders. All have heat and AC. They are all set up very nicely.
AT: What's been the one technology that has helped you most?
Petersen: GPS is probably one of the biggest advancements in technology for us. When I first started out we used reference points in the field. Power lines. Telephone poles. Trees. Anything that you could mark to know where you had just been. We also used the paper flaggers.
GPS has helped tremendously. It’s one of the tools that I would hate to be without. It makes us more productive, more accurate, more efficient with everything we do. And then if there’s ever a question of where we were or what we did, we can go back and bring up those log files on the computer and it shows exactly where the airplane has been. When the spray is on and when it’s off. How many acres we did. Speed, direction – it records all of that.
AT: What kind of ag spraying does your operation do?
Petersen: We’re mostly spraying corn and soybeans here. We do some wheat (fungicides) early in the springtime, generally in May. Typically we get busy on corn here (fungicides and/or insecticides) the first week of July. Usually around the first of August we start with our soybean work, where we do insecticides.
AT: What kind of application rates do you have around here?
Petersen: Typically, we’re doing 2 gallon work and 5 gallon work per acre. That’s about 99 percent of what we do.
AT: What do growers expect from you these days?
Petersen: I think customers today are looking for good value for their dollar. They want a good job for the amount of money they are paying. We try to accommodate our growers as best we can with the products they want applied, at the rates they want them applied. I think our name goes hand-in-hand with that. Pontiac Flying Service: we’re in the service business; we’re here to help them produce a better crop.
AT: Why do you fly Air Tractors?
Petersen: Right now, Air Tractor is the leader in ag airplanes. I moved out of the Ag Cat several years ago because it wasn’t enough airplane to keep up with our work load. Air Tractors haul a bigger load. They are more efficient and more productive. They are just top of the line -- the best airplane out there.
AT: What is the key to your success?
Petersen: One of the things we’ve sold our growers on is our willingness to try different products, to do GPS maps for them, to do check strips when they are comparing products. That one thing in the past couple of years has really opened the door for us on our fungicide work in corn. We’re willing to go out and do that 5-gallon work. A lot of guys don’t like doing 5-gallon work because it takes more loads. We'll do that work, and we’ve stuck by that.
I think customers want to know that we will be here every year for them. They want to be assured that we aren't some fly-by-night operation. If there’s a problem, they know they can come to us and talk about it. We are willing to do the kind of application work that they want – not what we want. But how do they want it done?
We encourage our customers to try different things and different products, and not do the same old routine year after year. We’re there when we say we’ll be there. We’re up-front with our customers when we get really busy. We don’t over-promise.
Customers also want to know when their field has been sprayed. So we’ve started sending them a fax with all the spray details, acres and dates. That way, customers don’t have to keep calling and asking if their field has been sprayed yet. We’re here to help our growers produce that championship crop every year. We are here to help them do a better job of farming. When they’re successful, we’re successful.
A critical thing that has helped our business is the help of my wife, Sarah, in the office. Without her we wouldn’t have the quality of application and organization that we have.
Sarah takes care of the customers, all the maps to the pilots, and also my people on the ground. You’re only as good as the people you have working for you. We’ve got a tremendous bunch of professionals here who help out on the loading pad and in the office.
AT: Where does your Air Tractor dealer fit into this picture?
Petersen: I’ve worked with a couple of different dealers in my time as an Air Tractor owner. All of them have been good about taking care of me. Whether it’s parts, questions -- you name it. I’ve worked with Bill Taylor, of Farm Air in Fairfiled, Illinois, for my Air Tractor parts.
I’ve also had some interaction with the Air Tractor factory. Jim Hirsch – I’ve talked with him quite a few times. If there’s something that comes up that I can’t find an answer for, I can always call those guys and they always call me back. Always. I know they’re busy, but they always find time for me. They want to make sure that I’m taken care of. My experience dealing with the factory has been excellent. All of those guys are just fantastic individuals to work with.