Been seeing on the TV news that aerial spraying to eradicate gypsy moth caterpillars has been going on near the Port of Tacoma, on Capitol Hill, around Gig Harbor and elsewhere in central Puget Sound urban areas. They said it is not a chemical insecticide being sprayed, rather it is a bacteria called BTK that occurs naturally in soil. Apparently harmless to people, although they do advise washing if you come into contact with it.
http://www.kingcounty.gov/healthservice ... moths.aspx

Of course, there's always that fringe element that suspects anything like this is part of a conspiracy, esp since BTK is used in GMO farming (cue sinister music).
http://www.eraofwisdom.org/seattle-olym ... ill-moths/

I'm curious if anyone knows who the contractor(s) is that's doing the spraying, or the make/model of aircraft. I can see on the TV news shots that it's a turbine-powered low-wing, unless that's just canned footage, but I don't know my agplanes well enough to tell if it's an Air Tractor or just what.

Doesn't sound like a problem. Google a "Foray@" label to be sure about everything about it. Also there are generics that have the same active ingredients but may have different additives like the sticker they mentioned in Foray. For many sprays the sticker and other additives are added to the labeled main product, but they have labels as well.

The plane looks like an advertising poster for Air Tractor. It is painted Air Tractor but Rob could better identify jet sprayers. They all look alike for the safety features: low wing, pilot above trailing edge as far from engine as possible, hopper behind engine, pilot up high, cutters on windscreen and gear, and cable between cockpit and top of vertical stabilizer.

The spring grear give it away as a air tractor.

Yes, Air Tractor. There's a gent in Grand Forks, ND who sprays for mosquitoes with two airplanes, one a Piper Navajo and the other a Cessna Skymaster. Both have large internal tanks and are restricted category.

I'm surprised the FAA will let them spray over congested areas with a single, even a turbine single. That's why the guy in ND had to go to twins.

Of course, that Air tractor may have absolutely nothing to do with this particular contract.

I was in eastern Washington many years ago....1973??....and there was a BIG operation going on spraying for, I believe gypsy moths with three Super Constellations. They were essentially spraying all of eastern Washington.

MTV

NineThreeKilo wrote:The spring grear give it away as a air tractor.

Be careful with that, we have more than one member on this site flying spring geared Thrush'. The Thrush 550, 660, and 710 are all spring geared aircraft.

Unless mission parameters dictate otherwise, I am openly biased towrds the Thrush, and consequently not the greatest AT judge, and yes the photostock is an AT. I'd hazard a guess that the one in the photo is an AT 502A with late model wingtips... which happens to be IMHO the flyenest of the AT's. (if there was such a thing)

Having said all that, the bottom link says it will be a red and white airplane, which leads me to believe it will probably be a tanker or ex. In which case it will probably be an AT 802 of some variety.

We spray in/near congested areas, but for tremendously smaller blocks. This requires a 'congested area plan'. It is far easier to pull off with helicopters, as you can get away from turning over houses much easier, but that would not help in this application, nor would it be cost effective. Like Mike I am surprised they went along with single engine F/W for this app. Specially at 250' AGL which many will construe as 'right over the top of my house'.

Take care, Rob

Nows your chance to go buzz all your buddies in town Hotrod! " It must've been that gypsy sprayer we saw on the news"

Oh boy, give me a single PT6 over a congested area than a couple IO-360's or TIO-540's any day...

Here's a link to a news report with video of the spraying plane.
http://q13fox.com/2016/04/18/aerial-spr ... ashington/

I live adjacent to some commercial timberlands (aka "tree farms"), there's been some occasional spraying there. Mainly defoliant (roundup?) to kill the leafy stuff (alder trees, etc) which hinder the growth of slower-growing fir & cedar trees by shading them out. I've always seen helicopters used, never fixed wing aircraft- I assume because a helo can just land on one of the logging rod landings to load up and fuel up.

I'm curious if any piston-powered agplanes are currently in production? I've never even seen a Cessna AgWagon, and the piper Pawnees I've seen are used as glider tugs. There's a couple old Grumman AgCats parked in the blackberries at a local grass strip. I know a couple guys who sprayed with Supercubs back in the day, and I seem to recall a few low-wing agplanes produced back in the 1970's with round engines: Snow, Weatherly, maybe others? Don't know if any of these are used much anymore.

When I was a kid visiting my grandparents in Hialeah, FL, WWII era bombers flew over at just above tree tops spaying for Mediterranean fruit flys. Not sure what the active ingredient was but the carrier would flat eat the paint off your car if you let it stand in the sun. We never worried about the insecticide it contained.....then again we opened our windows for the DDT fog trucks so that stuff would kill the mosquitoes in the house.

Now I know that is just NOT going to happen now, but there was never an incident with the planes as far as I heard.

Leland Snow, who developed the Air Tractor, also designed and built the old Snows you see with round engines. You can still get a piston Pawnee from Brazil, where the certificate was purchased. You can get a Dromder with a big round engine from Poland. Spray mechanics threw round engines out back when they ran out in the fifties. They brought them back in for parts in the seventies. Now they have run out of parts. How many B-24s came out of the Ford plant every day during the war?

hotrod180 wrote:I'm curious if any piston-powered agplanes are currently in production?

Technically, I think the Gippsland GA 200 is still "in production" though I don't think they've built one in a number of years, and the company's changed hands since.

Lots of Pawnees, Ag Trucks, Ag Huskys, Weatherlys, etc out in the prairies where it's hard to make a turbine pay. Back in sugar beet country, though, lots of turbines. That said, a lot of operators use one of those planes to break in a new pilot before they put them into a turbine. A couple of my students went to work for one of the biggest operators in the country, and they keep a 400 Pawnee around to use for the new pilots. After one season in the Pawnee, they go to an AT 402 Turbine.

Putting a brand new spray pilot into a million dollar airplane, like an AT 502 is pretty sketchy. Don't know if you could even get insurance. You gotta start somewhere, and there are still a lot of piston powered sprayers out there. Friend of mine just totally rebuilt a Pawnee for a guy.....like new now, and back to work.

MTV

The Kingsleys have a jig and still rebuild a couple of Pawnees a year. If you want to buy a wrecked Pawnee, you have to be fast to beat those boys.

onefitty wrote:Oh boy, give me a single PT6 over a congested area than a couple IO-360's or TIO-540's any day...

FACT!!!

mtv wrote:

hotrod180 wrote:I'm curious if any piston-powered agplanes are currently in production?

Technically, I think the Gippsland GA 200 is still "in production" though I don't think they've built one in a number of years, and the company's changed hands since.

Lots of Pawnees, Ag Trucks, Ag Huskys, Weatherlys, etc out in the prairies where it's hard to make a turbine pay. Back in sugar beet country, though, lots of turbines. That said, a lot of operators use one of those planes to break in a new pilot before they put them into a turbine. A couple of my students went to work for one of the biggest operators in the country, and they keep a 400 Pawnee around to use for the new pilots. After one season in the Pawnee, they go to an AT 402 Turbine.

Putting a brand new spray pilot into a million dollar airplane, like an AT 502 is pretty sketchy. Don't know if you could even get insurance. You gotta start somewhere, and there are still a lot of piston powered sprayers out there. Friend of mine just totally rebuilt a Pawnee for a guy.....like new now, and back to work.

MTV

Mike for what it's worth, I have a friend who's operation still does exactly that. They have a 300 horse Ag wagon and a AT-301 for the new guys breaking out. Interestingly, they are rebuilding a 400 horse Pawnee to replace the ag wagon. Even at that, insurance is high enough that a guy "has to work for free" his first year. Of course, I'm sure this is highly linked to the area and the work. After that, if the new guy gets enough hours, he slowly starts picking up 502 work. Not a huge operator, but plenty of work with 8 planes.

As far as spraying over trees, populated areas...there are guys getting work with 602's/802' but it's obviously a turbine-only world. One operator I know has an 802-only fleet that flies year round. Tree seeding/fertilizing, fire fighting, Urban work (mosquitos), and some defoliating in south America.

Bill

After a nice 2.5 hr flight yesterday morning I stopped by a buddies shop where he's building a Bearhawk LSA. Low and behold Todd Petersen (Autogas STC) was there. Growing up just off the end of the runway, I knew Petersen's ran a large fleet of Agcats including a Twin-cat. Now, I'd always heard that they had used the Twin for spraying mosquitos over towns because it was required to run one over populated areas. I guess all those old rumors where just that. The only reason they had that Twin was because it was offered to them as a rental for less than they could fly their own planes. It was a lot faster than the radial planes, but burned though fuel like crazy. Cowling and baffles weren't set up quite right and keeping them cool was a problem. Two TSIO-550's.

There's your Cliff Clavin bit of useless info for the day.

That's a wild looking contraption! Like to see more pics of it.
Reminds me of a picture that was part of the MAF calendar a few years ago-- a Cub similarly configured with two engines, circa early 1960's.

I have some friends that do that on the east coast for the Forrest service.
If they don't spray them the trees will be completely dead in a few years. Very serious.
I'm assuming it's all through the same govt entity, so in they're infinite wisdom they require air tractor 802's because they're "superior". Ha. Which a lot of them are red and white due to also having fire contracts.
It's another example of how to waste money.
It's a very low volume gig so they can't even fill the planes. Would be much more suited to a 402 or equivalent plane at a much reduced cost. But hey. I'm sure the government knows much more about efficiency and what works best than an industry that has spent countless years and $ on how to do the best work the most economically.
It's pretty high flying and an airplane is definetly a better choice than a chopper. I don't know much about your area or how congested it is but at 200 ft plus if not already over solid trees, you should have enough time to try and "crash" her in a somewhat uncongested spot.
They do require very well maintained aircraft at least with fairly low hours. Not more than 3-3500hrs Tt if I remember correctly. Something could go wrong like anything but no more dangerous than tons of airports final approaches over highly congested areas; or less dangerous even.

55wagon wrote:I have some friends that do that on the east coast for the Forrest service.
If they don't spray them the trees will be completely dead in a few years. Very serious.
I'm assuming it's all through the same govt entity, so in they're infinite wisdom they require air tractor 802's because they're "superior". Ha. Which a lot of them are red and white due to also having fire contracts.
It's another example of how to waste money.
It's a very low volume gig so they can't even fill the planes. Would be much more suited to a 402 or equivalent plane at a much reduced cost. But hey. I'm sure the government knows much more about efficiency and what works best than an industry that has spent countless years and $ on how to do the best work the most economically.
It's pretty high flying and an airplane is definetly a better choice than a chopper. I don't know much about your area or how congested it is but at 200 ft plus if not already over solid trees, you should have enough time to try and "crash" her in a somewhat uncongested spot.
They do require very well maintained aircraft at least with fairly low hours. Not more than 3-3500hrs Tt if I remember correctly. Something could go wrong like anything but no more dangerous than tons of airports final approaches over highly congested areas; or less dangerous even.

You're mighty quick to judge the government, based on their using large aircraft. Has it occurred to you that the Forest Service has SEAT (Single Engine Air Tankers) on "exclusive use" contracts? Many of those SEAT aircraft are in fact AT 802s, because they carry a lot of retardant.

But, the important point is that, when an aircraft is contracted on an exclusive use contract (which they do so that they'll KNOW the resources will be available during a fire event) the contractor is paid a daily rate, to keep the aircraft available to the fire community, and an hourly rate when the plane is flown. Typically, the daily "availability" rate is pretty high, and the hourly rate is much lower than you or I would pay to charter such an airplane. In other words, it may well have been a LOT cheaper to use an 802 that's already on contract to do this work, even though it was a bigger airplane than needed, than it would have to go out and charter a 402 to do the work.

There's no doubt that the government can be wasteful, but it helps to know something about the system before you cast stones.

MTV

MTV wrote:In other words, it may well have been a LOT cheaper to use an 802 that's already on contract to do this work, even though it was a bigger airplane than needed, than it would have to go out and charter a 402 to do the work.

How much, if any, time/effort is required to convert a fire fighting SEAT back to spray use and vise versa? I've always been curious if there were actual mechanical changes made or not.