Dyer takes off into the wild blue yonder for one of many flights Monday, July 14. Dyer and several other pilots are spreading fungicide on local fields after a wetter-than-normal spring. (Kathy Fairchild/Democrat-News) [Click to enlarge] [Order this photo]

For the last several days, Marshall residents have been scanning the skies, some in anticipation and others with trepidation, as crop-duster Sam Dyer, known to most as "Dyer the Flyer," zooms out of the Marshall airport and swoops across fields in Saline County, delivering much-needed fungicide to fields soggy from an excessively wet spring.

Dyer's plane is a Cessna AgTruck, a 1978 model that's specially equipped for crop dusting.

Sam Dyer, "Dyer the Flyer," rests between crop-dusting flights Monday, July 14, at Marshall Airport, sitting on the wing of his Cessna 178 AgTruck. (Kathy Fairchild/Democrat-News) [Click to enlarge] [Order this photo]

Dyer said he learned to fly, "right here" at the Marshall Airport. He didn't have any prior flying experience, although he was in the military for a short tour.

"When I was in the service, I walked," he said.

Dyer was born in Fairville, "just a place in the road now," he said.

Don Malter, foreground, was one of Sam Dyer's student pilots 30 years ago. Malter said he comes out to Marshall Airport to help Dyer whenever he can. (Kathy Fairchild/Democrat-News) [Click to enlarge] [Order this photo]

He graduated from Marshall High School in 1956, and after a semester at Missouri Valley College, started looking for a job.

"I got a dollar an hour," he said, when he started working at the airport in 1957 as a flight instructor and crop duster.

Although it was his brother who gave him the passion to want to fly, Dyer said, "It was just a skill I wanted to learn."

Don Malter, who has already had some of his fields sprayed, was at the airport Monday morning, July 14, helping Dyer refuel and reload, as he has for several years.

"Sam taught me to fly 30 years ago," said Malter, "so I come out and help whenever I can."

Malter had 150 acres sprayed last week and has another 250 acres that need it.

"We've seen good results from spraying," Malter said. "It's not expensive, really, when you compare it to the loss of an entire crop" to fungus.

Dyer isn't the only pilot operating out of the Marshall airport this year. Ron Catlett of Central Missouri Agri-Service said there are more crop-dusting planes at Marshall than usual this year.

"Normally, there's just one plane, but this year there are four or five," said Catlett, including Ralph Storm of Webster City, Iowa, who flies a Piper Brave 375.

"They'll be here for a week to 10 days," Catlett said.

Catlett said each flight takes from 45 minutes to an hour, depending on how many acres are to be sprayed and how much fuel and fungicide one plane can hold.

A typical crop-duster plane is a small, single-seat aircraft, although there is one plane flying out of Marshall that's much larger.

Dyer doesn't think of what he does as dangerous work.

"Dangerous? No -- it's just a job to me," he said.

Dyer said he's not surprised that there have been some complaints and concerns voiced about this year's flights.

"It happens every year," he said.

Crop-dusting planes dip and swoop radically as they spray. While the plane flies at 140 mph, the spray is released just 6 to 12 feet about the ground. People unfamiliar with the process often become alarmed, thinking the plane is out of control.

And some assume it's the pilot that's out of control, as one of our bloggers did, describing the pilot as "an idiot showing off for the entire neighborhood by putting our (lives) in danger."

Fortunately, neither the plane nor the pilot is "out of control," it's how the job is done. And in little more than a week, they'll be finished.

Shane Eddy, an area farmer and confessed "aviation nut" who is active in Slater's growing model airplane club, said there hasn't been an agricultural aerial show like this since he can remember.

"I know people in town are hearing those planes," he said. "They aren't a quiet airplane."

The sudden activity is linked to high grain prices, he said.

The fungicide product has been around for a while, but "this is one of the first times it's been cost effective" to apply it, he said.

Contact Kathy Fairchild at marshallhealth@socket.net