A pilot friend wrote an article, accompanied by a narrated video, about the business of drying cherry trees by helicopter.
I would be interested to hear what non-pilots think!
At the very least, thank your neighborhood helicopter industry member next time that you enjoy some cherries!
Seems like a pretty heavy carbon footprint and how about the exhaust – maybe similar to a light chemical spraying! I’ll think twice about cherries next time I’m at the market. It does help explain the very high prices cherries seem to sell for.
Repetitive, expensive, and dangerous? Seems like a good candidate for replacing with an automated giant drone.
You should make videos with a similar camera setup, showing your teaching style.
@pinder , R44 burns 16 gallons/hr. A 45 minute flight to dry 16 acres of cherries (i.e. 12 gallons) translates to 0.14 tons of CO2. Even with a weekly flybys , that is a very small amount compared to a few thousand tons of CO2 sequestered by the orchid. Do your own math and see if you still feel guilty for the environment..
this explains why they’re $4.99/lb., and usually don’t go below $2.99/lb. around July 4th. Labor-intensive crop. (The Rainier ones are even more expensive, typically at least $6/lb.) But this may reflect other factors, like WFM figuring wealthy customers will pay whatever they wish to charge for fresh fruit from the West Coast. Inflation in cherries has been about 100% since 1995.
Helicopters are also used for protecting crops from frost.
http://www.lostateminor.com/2011/08/03/helicopters-frost-fighting-for-new-zealand-wineries/
Using fans is far cheaper, I assume.
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/3779703-181/ruling-allows-mendocino-county-vineyard?ref=related
1 g of lead / acre from the 100 LL Avgas, over 500 kg of cherries; the lead contamination is not insignificant.
After getting nauseus from that video, maybe you should stick a brushless gimbal in your cockpit.
Maria Langer is an eclectic mind. Great writing and photography. Always something interesting.
After watching some 4 minutes of that video, I had the same thought as #2 billg above: if there ever was a case for semi- or wholly automatic electric cable-fed hovering drones with large rotors (in effect “Air Roombas”), programmed to follow contours of the field, tree coronas, AND knowing well in advance where dangerous wires are, THEN THIS ACTIVITY WAS IT.. Maria Langer, enjoy your cherry-orchard-shaking from above while you can, but if the market for those seasonal services is as big as it sounds, you are going to be replaced by robots soon enough.