HILLSBORO, ND In the early 1990s, Ron Deck of Sky Tractor Supply decided he wanted to improve the evenness of the swath of the company's Ag Cats. One of the problem areas was coming from the center section of the booms. Invariably, the swath would either be light in this area or in some cases 'load up' with a heavy application. Ron discovered that by installing the Lund Boom to his fleet of Ag Cats he could vastly improve Sky Tractor's swath. Typically, applicators will space nozzles closer together between the inboard section of the right wing and the usual location of the flagger, believing the spray would fill in the gap under the belly of the aircraft left from the propeller 'wash'. With the Lund Boom, Ron found out this was no longer necessary. He also found out that his pilots could respond to the farmer's request to make their applications closer to the crop without the inherent streaking from too close to the crop application. This closer to the crop application also resulted in less drift potential. Sky Tractor uses the CP nozzle. Because the Ag Cat does not travel as fast as turbine powered ag aircraft across the field, Ron uses the original-style, standard 30°, 45° and 90° deflector plates, depending on the application needs. Pilots need not worry about the Lund Boom causing tip-over problems. Although, at first, the boom's location may look precarious, being so low to the ground in respect to the wing-mounted booms, it is designed in such a way that its mount brackets will collapse from the inertia of the aircraft before causing the aircraft to cartwheel over on its nose. Operating from four to six Ag Cats outfitted with the Lund Boom during the course of ten years, Sky Tractor has never lost an aircraft resulting from the installation of a Lund Boom. For that matter, the company has never lost a Lund Boom during its operations (IS THIS CORRECT? AND HOW ABOUT THE NUMBER OF A/C, I GUESSED). For clean purposes, Sky Tractor devised a simple method by which to remove left over materials from the Lund Boom while cleaning out the rest of the boom system. By installing a ball valve to the end of the boom with a quick connect, the pilot or loader can attach a small hose to the quick connect and route the contents of the boom back to a collector bin. A load hose with fresh water is attached to the boom ends of the wing-mounted booms and clean water flows through the entire booms system under very low pressure, careful to not activate the check valves of the nozzles. Once the all the material is removed from the boom, the system is flushed under pressure and collected for disposal at a later time. More than ??? Lund Booms have been installed on ag aircraft throughout the world. It has solved many aerial applicators' problems with prop wash, while allowing the pilot to make applications closer to the ground. By integrating a GPS system that will permit the pilot precise and narrower swath widths, reducing boom lengths to 60%, adjusting nozzles to create heavier droplets, utilizing right side boom shut-offs and operating closer to the crop with the Lund Boom, an applicator can minimize drift to the point of almost nonexistence. For more information about the Lund Boom, contact Maynard Lund at 800-801-0241 (509-659-0241 for international calls). See Lund Flying Service's ad on page ??? of this issue of AgAir Update.