I'm goin to hate myself for even mentioning this!!!
Find some one with a Cub or something slow and stable
Get a five gallon bucket, put the icecream bars in it
tie your long rope to the bucket
start lowering it out the door which is open
After the right amount is out the bucket will be stationary and you can let go of the rope, or when the get the ice cream you can haul the bucket back up.
You math whiz guys can figure out the turn radius and the length of rope.
Of course you might want to practice in a large open area first!!
I once new a person who said there uncles brotherinlaw's cousin did this once.
GT

Pack a cooler full and wrap it with 2 rolls of duct tape. In a Cessna you can move the copilot seat fwd and will have plenty of room to push the door open. Flaps at approach, 60 mph, Hard right rudder. Do some ground tests and then practice the slow flight door ops up high. The pilot tells the pusher when to push the cooler. Does it have to be 500 ft? most trees are only 125ft tall. From 125ft the wall mart cooler will get banged up but last until the goodies are used up. Parachutes, Streamers, you better know what your doing. Ive seen experienced people get stuff stuck in the tail. The cooler is snag free and can be pushed past the door and over the gear leg. My coolers full of beer and ice stayed together on the shore line but I watched one bounce right through camp. Not my push.

Thats how the mail was done. It will take some practice.

I like the idea of the bucket - wasn't that in a movie not too long ago?

There will be two people in the plane, a pilot and a bombardier. Both have extensive experience dropping pumpkins and other vegetables and can hit a spot within about 20 yards from 500 ft, but have never dropped anything they want to retrieve afterward! Landing is out of the question, the terrain won't allow it. The plan is to go with the bubble wrap and duct tape with a tail to slow it down. We're not talking about a lot of weight, it's just ice cream sandwiches. The door will be removed and the package dropped from the floor to ensure no entanglements with the elevators. The drop is scheduled for 8:00pm tonight, weather permitting.

A dry run with a bucket might be in the works, just for fun...

The movie is called "End of the Spear" (http://www.amazon.com/End-Spear-Louie-L ... B000EXDS4I) and its a darn good backcountry flying movie.

The scene with the bucket on a rope is very cool, but I think it was filmed on a sound stage in Burbank, so I woudn't go using it as a how-to guide...

I have considered doing some drops solo. Maybe I'll get around to testing this out someday. For now, here goes.

The Preparation: Attach a cut/shaped piece of cargo/fish net underneath the fuselage. Fish net should have a hole in the middle, with line going through the edge of the netting at the hole, so that it will close when pulled tight. Ice cream bars should be packed in box within box within box, with generous amounts of bubble wraps. Place the box onto the netting when it's on the ground, pull the line tight which would both keep the box in the net and raise the entire net and box against the bottom of the fuselage. With the line tight, lead it through the door jam of your door and tie it off somewhere secure and easy to reach, with a quick release knot and/or have a knife handy.

The Drop: Target drop zone should be somewhere that provides some cushion, like spongy, low bush growth of some type. When at your drop zone, at your prescribed drop speed (not stall) pull the quick release knot out and let it go out your door. The line will continue to run out, opening the net at the bottom, dropping your box. No need for a passenger. No need for major in-cabin movement and potentially distracting actions that would otherwise keep the plane in safe, level flight. Make sure the quick release line is fairly long, so that after releasing your box, you simply pull in the line again, which would also pull the net back up against your under-fuselage, away from your gear.

If or when I try this sometime and if it works, then I'll let you all know.

My daughter's science fair project last winter was on terminal velocity compared to the size of the "splat" produced when dropping 1 pound bags of flour from various heights... never reached Vt (I think that’s it) but the velocity curve was beginning to flatten out as we dropped from 1000 and 1200 feet AGL (low ceiling prevented higher drops).

I don't recommend putting them in flour bags although one suspended below a package would make for a good location marker...

OC

The drop worked perfectly! The ice cream sandwiches were frozen, then wrapped in bubble wrap, surrounded with dry ice chunks, then placed in an insulated box which was wrapped with copious amounts of cheap 100mph duct tape. Two duct tape "handles" were created on the top of the box to which an old dome tent rain fly was attached with rope, then wrapped around the box. The box dropped like a charm, the "chute" opened and worked perfectly (nothing ever got close to the tail of the airplane) and the scouts enjoyed fresh ice cream sandwiched on the top of a mountain. Thanks for all the suggestions! Uh, my friend appreciated it! Unfortunately, he didn't take any pictures of the delivery or the box.

How few times we get to be Heros. They smile, you smile. People working through the problems and doing something about it is what makes me proud to be part of this group. Just icecream, but I bet for them it was the best icecream ever. Your effort will live in stories around the campfire for a least 2 generations. Im going to now get up off the couch and get some icecream.

amacbean wrote:The drop worked perfectly! The ice cream sandwiches were frozen, then wrapped in bubble wrap, surrounded with dry ice chunks, then placed in an insulated box which was wrapped with copious amounts of cheap 100mph duct tape. Two duct tape "handles" were created on the top of the box to which an old dome tent rain fly was attached with rope, then wrapped around the box. The box dropped like a charm, the "chute" opened and worked perfectly (nothing ever got close to the tail of the airplane) and the scouts enjoyed fresh ice cream sandwiched on the top of a mountain. Thanks for all the suggestions! Uh, my friend appreciated it! Unfortunately, he didn't take any pictures of the delivery or the box.

You have instilled the love of aviation in a bunch of kids. For that you are my hero. We all talked about it, you did it.

I get together with a five old scouts that I camped with 50 plus years ago at Lake Powell most every year in June. We were in a troop in Burbank, CA. We always talk about the cool leaders we had and what a great time they showed us. These kids will be doing the same 50 years from now.

Tim

Glad everything turned out OK. As has been mentioned, supply of mail and other goods has long been supplied to remote areas in this way. One of the Alaska pioneer pilot books I read talked about freezing whole sides of beef and chucking them out to mining camps. There are many stories of near misses to people on the ground.
The reasoning for your drop reminded me of another similar case with a different outcome from a few years ago. Hate to be a downer, but review of other's previous bad events has served to keep me on my toes when doing things that are new to me.
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/GenPDF.asp?id= ... 080&rpt=fa

Back in high school, before the first Kennedy was shot, my friend and I were working at the local airport to earn flying time. The boss landed a job of distributing leaflets for an event at the college a few miles from the airport. He enlisted my friend as the bombardier to drop the leaflets from the back seat of the J-3. They took off and were soon circling the college. The boss gave the signal to start the distribution and watched in horror as my friend heaved the entire brick of leaflets over the side. Six or seven sheets fluttered off the top of the pile, but the bomb headed for the center of the earth. No fatalities, thank God, but the brick did dig an impressive little crater in the playing field. The Boss had to make a second run on his own dime and he selected an alternative bombardier for the mission.

YB

Smart kid. He did the job as directed and saved his boss a lot of fuel.

Tim

Thread Update:

Since the first drop of ice cream bars, there have been several more and the method has been improved. For ice cream bars, ice cream sandwiches, etc. we start off with an insulated card-board box. I get them from a local manufacturer who makes Fat Boy Ice Cream Sandwiches. They're maybe 18" cubes. Then we fill with the appropriate amount of ice cream (which is almost always as much as we can stuff in there) and a chunk of dry ice. The dry ice is probably overkill, but the scouts have endless fun with it on the ground. The whole box is wrapped in 100mph duct tape for structural integrity and taped closed.

Then I loop 1" nylon webbing around the box leaving 2 "handles" on either side. I purchased a U.S. Military 5' Diam. Parachute - viewable here: http://www.sportsmansguide.com/net/cb/u ... x?a=713504 and on ebay.

The parachute is tied to the nylon handles, then carefully rolled up around the box. It's the coolest thing to watch it open and drop the box slowly to the ground. The box sustains minimal damage, and the ice cream is enjoyed thoroughly.

I'll add pictures of the box as soon as I get it back from today's drop. This time it was a church group on a Pioneer Trek (I wrote "Ice Cold Manna" on the boxes). It was 90° on the ground today, so they loved the ice cream!

Here's a shot of the group. You can see a few people in the lower right of the image. That is where the Ice Cream landed. Not too bad for dropping from 500'.

robertc wrote:With twenty fire seasons behind me, I have a few hints.
4. If the package is too large to go out of the window, the door will have to come off. You won't be able to get the door open against the slipstream to throw a package of any size out.

Having jumped out the doors of several unmodified Cessna's over my skydiving career, I can say with certainty that the door is openable in flight, even far enough to get a human-sized package out (ie, me). The bombardier/skydiver sits in the back seat. Push the copilot's seat forward as far as you can, drop flaps and slow down and then put in a full right-rudder slip: you won't have that much problem getting the door open. Just make sure the pilot watches his airspeed and stays on it.

Also, in my opinion, you're taking a *huge* risk trying to half-bake a "parachute" by just wrapping fabric around something you're pushing out the door: it is *very* easy for your setup to catch air too quickly and wrap around the horiz stabilizer....and the result can be deadly ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5olNmA4FATM to see just how quickly it can happen). Honestly, setting up a static line system really won't be that hard: and I'm sure that if you called a handful of parachute riggers you'd find someone to help you setup a system that wasn't terribly expensive. Or, if you really want to do it "on your own" go find an unairworthy pilot's bailout rig and attach the pin to a static line. Just make sure you have a knife (or two) in your plane to cut the static line if it hangs up.

I may have mentioned this before but it fits the topic so well,

Several years ago "someone" left two elderly nearly crippled old guys in moose camp to continue hunting. One ran out of snoose and the other ran out of pain meds for arthritis.

Someone packed a whole tube of snoose (ten cans) and a whole shaving kit full of various expensive and powerful medications. It was all wrapped in sheets to use as meat sacks, had a roll of survey tape tied to it and was dropped on the rocky beach near camp.

When someone went back to camp a couple of days later these two old geezers were sitting in the cabin, higher than a kite with a string of snoose running off their chins.

The cans had ruptured, the pills had turned to powder and dust.posting.php?mode=reply&f=6&t=5747#

So as to not waste anything and because they really needed it, they poured all the snoose and drugs out into a plate, picked out all the capsule shells and shattered pill bottles and stirred the whole thing up. They were taking it by the spoonful posting.php?mode=reply&f=6&t=5747# and were just "cruising in overdrive"

The idea was sound, the drop was perfect, the package was not so great. The end result was so very funny posting.php?mode=reply&f=6&t=5747#

Every year the PPA has A ROCK PAINTING PARTY on the rim north of PAN one of our members does a TP drop for the Sunday breakfast, Most years it is very close to the center of the camp, drop plane stright tail 172. much fun

Saw a thing on "Alaska Airmen " where they had a package(cooler ?) on a 200 ft. (maybe more ) rope and doing a turn about a point from a PA-12 ,lower it down til it touched -then releasing rope.

This is the bucket drop



► 3:12► 3:12 www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRZAwERwHVA

Bill