agricultural
2 aircraft
Air Tractor AT-802
The AT-802 is what happens when agricultural aviation stops being folksy and starts being serious. Eight hundred gallons of payload, a turbine engine with 1,350 shaft horsepower, and the ability to operate off rough strips that would wreck anything with retractable gear. Air Tractor took everything learned from decades of ag flying and built the definitive working airplane. But the AT-802 didn't stop at farming. Strap floats on it and it becomes the Fire Boss, scooping water from lakes and dropping it on wildfires. The military looked at it and saw a light attack platform. Built in Olney, Texas by a company that Leland Snow started because he thought he could build a better crop duster. He was right. If you've driven past a field being sprayed anywhere in the world, there's a good chance it was an Air Tractor.
Grumman G-164 Ag Cat
Grumman, the company that built the Hellcat and the Tomcat, sat down and designed a crop duster. And they brought the same philosophy that kept Navy pilots alive over the Pacific: build it tough, build it simple, and build it so the pilot walks away. The Ag Cat was the first purpose-designed agricultural aircraft from a major manufacturer, and it changed the business. Before the Ag Cat, farmers were spraying fields with converted military trainers and war surplus biplanes held together with baling wire and optimism. Grumman gave them a real tool. The steel-tube fuselage could take a wire strike that would fold a lesser airframe. The radial engine was reliable in the dust and heat of summer spraying. And when turbine conversions came along, the Ag Cat took to them like it had been waiting.