<p>Patricia Pearson looks forward to watching the departures of the airplanes she helps build. Each "crop-duster" most likely will fight insects, quell forest fires or wipe out plants used to make illegal drugs such as cocaine.</p><p>"I enjoy knowing that I have a part in building an aircraft that may save lives," said Pearson, a mechanic with Thrush Aircraft Inc., one of the world's leading manufacturers of crop-duster aircraft.</p><p>Among frequent fliers, Thrush may not be as well known as Boeing, Airbus because the planes built by the small, south Georgia company often fly in obscurity, spraying chemicals on farm fields or in remote jungles around the world.</p><p>Thrush's planes resemble the sleek, single-engine fighters of World War II, but instead of machine guns and cannons, they are armed with chemical tanks and nozzles for spraying pesticides, fertilizers and herbicides. The pilots who fly them are known officially as aerial applicators, but they're commonly referred to as crop dusters, even though they haven't used dust in years.</p><p>"An agricultural airplane takes a lot of abuse," said Ed Anthony, owner of Leesburg Spraying Service in Leesburg, north of Albany, who owns two Thrushes. "It does a lot of landings and takeoffs at maximum capacity."</p><p>These flying farm implements, often equipped with global-positioning navigation systems and powerful turbine engines, cost from $750,000 to $1.4 million each.</p><p>"They protect us from bugs and drugs and put out fires," said Larry Bays, the company's president, who added that Thrushes are being flown in 80 countries. "As long as they keep selling John Deeres, we'll keep selling the Thrush."</p><p>While the planes are primarily agricultural, the aircraft from Thrush and its leading competitor, Air Tractor of Olney, Texas, have proven their value on other types of missions. They're being used to fight crop-damaging locusts in North Africa, kill disease-carrying mosquitos in Central America and fight fires in the Western United States. The U.S. State Department uses armored versions to eradicate plants that produce cocaine and heroin in Columbia.</p><p>One of the Thrush drug planes, recently in the shop for maintenance, has patches over the 100 bullet holes _ hits it took while flying over coca fields in Columbia.</p><p>"It's pretty effective when they hit that coca with Roundup," Bays said, referring to a popular herbicide. "That's when the farmers get mad and start shooting."</p><p>Thrush and Air Tractor have a common heritage _ aircraft designer Leland Snow, who turns 75 this month.</p><p>In the 1950s, Snow designed his first ag plane and founded a company in Texas to produce it. Rockwell-Standard bought Snow's company and he designed the Thrush for Rockwell in Texas.</p><p>When production was moved to southwest Georgia in 1969, Snow remained in Texas, designed a new model and formed Air Tractor.</p><p>Albany businessman Fred Ayres bought Rockwell's ag plane business in the late 1970s to continue Thrush production. However, the ag aircraft industry hit some financial turbulence in the late 1990s when a worldwide drought reduced demand for the planes and Ayres' losses were compounded because his company invested heavily in the failed development of a cargo plane.</p><p>Bays, one of Albany's former mayors, saved the Thrush factory in 2003 when he and a partner purchased Ayres Corp., formed Thrush Aircraft Inc., and resumed production.</p><p>When Bays took over, the factory's work force was down to four, from a high of about 500 in 1997. Now the plant's 150 employees produce three planes a month and Bays plans to hire 30 additional workers to increase production. Ayres stayed on as the new company's international sales manager.</p><p>Air Tractor's sales also began slumping in the late 1990s. The company says it sold 50 planes in 2002-03, 75 planes last year and expects to sell 80 in 2005.</p><p>The ag aviation industry is heavily dependent on the health of the farm economy, said Andrew Moore, executive director of the Washington-based National Agricultural Aviation Association, which represents aerial applicators and suppliers.</p><p>With record crops and strong commodity prices last year, the farm equipment industry had a banner year, said Bob Schnell, executive vice president of the Farm Equipment Manufacturers Association in St. Louis.</p><p>"Farmers were making money," he said. "They were having record crops and they had money to spend. A lot of the equipment was fairly old and they had to replace it."</p><p>Demand for spray planes also is expected to grow in countries such as Brazil and Argentina, which are expanding cropland. Also, with the spread of devastating Asian soybean rust to the United States last year and the fungus already discovered this year in Georgia and Florida, Bays said farmers also may rely even more on spray planes to keep the disease from gaining a foothold.</p><p>"The farm economy is a cycle of growth spurts and slowdowns," said Air Tractor vice president Kristin Edwards. "It seems that we're coming into one of the growth periods."</p><p>---</p><p>On the Net:</p><p>Thrush Aircraft Inc: www.thrushaircraft.com</p><p>HASH(0x1cdf944)</p><p>End ADV for May 7-8</p>
