Mountain flying time...

SHIVER ME TIMBERS wrote:
wrote:

It's really no big deal when you are crop spraying with
helicopters. We
use a truck for the loading platform/mixing rig and land crossways
on
the top of the truck.

Saw an interesting program the other night on plagues of grasshoppers
in Australia starting from the larvae stage to final days as adults.

They showed the lengths the government went through to try to control
these pests including massive aerial spraying programs mainly with
fixed wing. Interesting to see high wing Cessnas with spray booms
doing
low level spraying.

Curious question Mr. Selway.... What type of helicopter were you
using
to do the spraying and basically how long would a load last before
you
had to refil.

Shiver....
A truck nurse rig is my preferance for a number of reasons. It keeps
you up off the ground where you aren't fighting with the dust and blade
erosion, and it keeps your loading crew out of it as well. I did an
analysis years ago for Ag Pilot magazine about a typical hour of
helicopter ag work and it went kind of like this....
In each hour, you'll make a landing on top of the truck, which is by
nature, a precision landing placing your skids within 6" of a
designated spot, and do so probably 10 times per hour. Each takeoff
will be at or over max gross (yes its allowable in the restricted
catagory) in little or no wind, and with temps in the 80's or
thereabouts. Of course it will depend on the time of year, but summer
spraying is going to be hotter. Nearly always, there will be no wind to
affect spray drift so the conditions are at the worst for helicopters
(and airplanes).
The average spray load will take :06 minutes for each cycle from load
to off to load and off again. The average spray run is about :15
seconds and the spray turnaround will take about :07 seconds. This is
to make a 180 and place the spray boom within 12" of the last spray run
to make sure you have coverage without skips. Speed must be controlled
so the spray coverage is consistent. That amounts to making about 200
pull ups and turnarounds each hour and at least half of them are going
to be near something like trees, wires, buildings, equipment, towers,
or something else that can ruin your life, etc. On average, a load will
be about 100 gallons of chemical mix in helicopters. Some spray
requires as little as 2 gallons per acre, to over 50 gallons per acre.
Most of my spray was either 5 or 10 gallons per acre.
Combine that with the constant awareness of drift and other factors
that can affect your spraying job, not to mention people who are going
to stop and watch and then complain they got sprayed when they smell
the chemicals. I have had to explain, "Just because you can smell a bad
odor from the bathroom doesn't mean you got it on you..."
The skills required of spray pilots are not often discussed. Flying is
only a part of it. In addition to the FAA licenses, we also have to
take exams for the individual states/counties covering such things as
laws and regulations, agriculture, plants, insects, herbicides,
pesticides, acaricides, aquacides, rodenticides, growth regulators,
equipment calibration, an infinitum. The tests will often require not
only an appointment, but a hefty test fee and are done on a yearly
basis.
Working off the truck nurse rig is not partucularly difficult but takes
a different skill level and technique than working off the ground. Each
has its own series of problems. My preference is from the top of the
nurse rig.
There have been days when I made over 140 take offs and landings from
the top of the truck and spent more than 10-12 hours in the cockpit. I
could barely walk when I got out. The concentration required is more
tiring than the physical and the physical is as bad as digging a ditch
all day. Not uncommon for my hands to be so swollen in the morning I
had a hard time making a fist. At last count, I have been licensed in
12 states in the USA, and have worked in 26 foreign countries with a
foreign pilot license issued in at least 15 of them.
If I could get some help in posting pics, I'd be glad to. Not too sharp
in that regard. I'd be happy to share the pics of night spraying but
you can't see much...ggg
Rocky aka Ol S&B

I would presume that a safety feature of landing on a truck would be
that nobody on the ground would be in danger of being clipped by a
rotor, and the only people on the truck would be those directly
needed
to refuel the helicopter and refil the hoppers.

If you feel up to describing a day in the life I'm sure the folks
here
would be interested in reading about your adventures.

Last but not least if you would consider posting those pictures to
alt.binaries.pictures.aviation then we'd all get to have a peek.

wrote:

There have been days when I made over 140 take offs and landings from
the top of the truck and spent more than 10-12 hours in the cockpit. I
could barely walk when I got out.

Well Rocky as they say the grass always looks greener on the other side
of the fence.

I'm sure many people watching you at work, or reading little snippets
in a newsgroup would sit back and think gee that looks like a neat way
to make a living. Or something like.... well that doesn't look too
hard, look he just sits there and does the same thing all day long.

Thanks for sharing the story, I'm sure you have opened a lot of eyes
today. Don't know what they pay you for this, it probably isn't enough,
and you certainly earn every penny of it.

What is the steed of choice for doing this sort of work. I presume it's
a turbine.

Well, turbine is generally the choice and most operators are going that
route when they can afford to make the move. However, I can think of a
couple of piston helicopters that I flew for years alongside the
turbines and did the same productivity. The Hiller 12E, the Bell 47
TomCat conversion are two I know of. When the temps got up in the 80's
I could keep on working while they had to drop their loads down to
avoid overtemping.
I like the turbines for dependability but they are not that much more
productive in warm weather. But, having said that, when the temps get
cool and comes time for bucket work and fertilizing, the turbines
outwork the pistons hands down. There are pros and cons for each the
piston vs the turbines and eventually the pistons will be history. If
there are any great distances to travel, its a matter of balancing out
costs whether or not to trailer the helicopter, take the blades off or
not, vs ferry. If weather is a factor you need to figure out if you
should fly to the next job to get it sprayed, or lose the time in
trailering and perhaps lose the weather and not get the job done at
all. I have worked in areas where it was an easy :15 minute ferry but
the nurse rig had to travel 35-40 miles on the road to get to the job
site. There is so much more to it than most realize.
The only thing more fun than watching a spray pilot work is to be doing
it yourself!

HOW????