INTERNATIONAL
900th AT-802 Joins Fleet of Largest Ag Operator in Western Australia
The Dunn Aviation AT802 fleet in 2014. Inset: Ian Dunn’s pilot license, and photo with the Jersey cow.
A 24 | agairupdate.com
Australian Air Tractor operator Neville Dunn of Dunn Aviation recently took delivery of AT-802A-0900, the 900th in the 802 ag and firefighting series built by Air Tractor, Inc. in Olney, Texas. It will take its place among eleven other Air Tractor AT-802 series aircraft, an AT-504, AT-502B and an AT-401. The AT-802A-0900 ferry pilot left the Air Tractor headquarters in Olney, Texas, on June 9 to ferry the airplane across the Pacific Ocean to Australia. The aircraft arrived at Dunn Aviation in midJune. Dunn also purchased AT-802A-0905, soon to arrive at Dunn’s base in Ballidu. Both airplanes are configured as single-engine air tankers (SEAT) for aerial firefighting. The singleseat fire bombers are equipped with Air Tractor’s new Gen III Fire Response Delivery System fire gate. Serial number -0900 is also the very first AT-802 series airplane equipped with Air Tractor’s XFlow ram air induction filter system. Both airplanes are powered by the 1600 SHP Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A67F turbine engine. One reason why Dunn Aviation has become the largest ag operator in Western Australia is that they offer a wide range of services, including firefighting, pest and disease control, baiting, fertilizing, seeding, oil slick pollution control, mine site dust suppression, and revegetation. They provide more services and more ways to generate
income in the rugged, hardscrabble region. Dunn’s father, Ian Dunn, founded the company in Ballidu in 1965. The elder Dunn provided spraying services for cereal crops with one 790-liter capacity IMCO CallAir A-9. Other operators in the region were using converted de Havilland Tiger Moth airplanes at the time. From that initial CallAir, the company went to four Piper Pawnees, then to six Cessna AGwagons. Farmers in 1977 started growing legumes in Western Australia amongst their cereal crops so the ultra low volume spraying in the area soon disappeared. “My father had a colorful history,” Dunn recalls. “He had never got his pilot’s license until 1961. From 1947 when he began barnstorming to 1961, no license. And to top it off, they said, to prepare the new license, you had to send them two photos. One photo is to be on file. And one photo is on the license. Dad only had two photos of himself. So, one was him standing there. And another one was him with his arm around a Jersey cow, for which he’d won the blue ribbon. Which one did they put on his license? Well, of course, the one with his arm around the jersey cow.” Neville Dunn comes from a family of pilots. “Dad had five children with our mother: four boys and a girl. We all either fly or operate aircraft,” Dunn said. “So, an aircraft to our family was like a family car. I started flying in 1984. By 1988 I was
