Definitely not saying he couldn't do it cubscout. Guess just saying the whole thing in itself would be tough.
Using a 185. Getting it rigged out proper. Finding someone to let you use etc.
Not having experience doing ag would just be the icing on the cake in the difficulty department.
It's not rocket science but there's a whole lot more to "it" than most people realize.
Like i heard Luke telling someone. It's like drinking from a firehose in the beginning.
Didn't mean to say his skills of flying aren't great but the flying part is really the least of it. Heck if i can donit... And again. Nothing's impossible.
And rob. I don't think you could pay me enough to have to work an 802 from talking to some buddies that fly em.
Guess I haven't had the pleasure of meeting to many seat pilots yet. That's funny.
Oh and thrushes are the best. Haha

Oops here's the one I meant to post on the end if the last one. The one I put I'm picking up where I left off on my last load. I wasn't actually 21' off my line I was just tryin to take a pic...

No joke meat servo. Sweet pics! Where is that??
What don't you get rob? Just curious cause I don't have that or haven't used it. Always thought its be great. Most of my trim passes a half boom would be plenty. Wouldn't you save a lot of chemical that way? Especially at high gallonage....
If I look angry in a plane is that bad?

'55, Sorry man I didn't see your post there. You know my feelings on those damn things .
Luke, looks like you're having a blast! Sorry you're in the towers, those fields seem to take about twice as long or else you end up with pies missing around the tower

Take care, Rob

The half is just another tool in the box. If you think about your typical trapezoid swath deposition you can imagine opening and finishing with the center of a half on the edge and getting full deposition. It's also much easier to draw a line on the downwind edge of the field with that center rather than the outside edge. The second one is just the boss holding a line against an obstacle into the wind, nothing outside the field and covering it all to make the customer happy. I'm mostly just a dumb rotor head. Blows my mind how you guys can do what you do going across the field at 3 times the speed I do. Enjoying the thread, thanks.

whoops... doggone it '55, I missed your post again

Ok... I'll bite, but I'm pretty sure you're plenty hip to the right boom shut off and just wanna 'compare notes' so to speak.. and for the sake of others who are not aggies or might not be savvy, I'll share my take on it.

But first I guess I better apologize to Meat Servo It wasn't my intention to sound critical, just really curious... after all, we all know that the 'paint' never really paints a real picture of how the spray laid down, and by that same token, I don't believe that a still photo is every really a good qualifier of what was really going on compared to the live action...


Anyways... back to the right boom shut off that's right for us Pratt and normal turning Garret drivers because we take advantage of the props slip stream which helps ensure that there is no vortices at the belly. For those backwards turning G's, it should be left shut off...

Right boom shut off has nothing to do with chemical savings (rate), and everything to do with drift control...

If you look at the pictures you can see the wing tip vorticie, and you can see that under the center it just stops cold. With a well patterned right boom shut off you can literally park your nose on a row, and be assured that is where you're spray is gonna stop. No drift from the offending vortex, because there isn't one...

Looking at Meat Servos first right boom shut off pic shows this well (except IMHO the wind appears to be such that it would have worked out fine with or without the right side off... but that's just an opinion garnered from a still photo )

Ok... moving on to pic two... in this pic it would only make sense that he is trying not to drift across the road... but in that case his drift control (the nose of the airplane) is on the wrong side of his spray... in other words, if he's really trying not to drift across the road, and that is why his right boom is shut off, then he needs to be flying the other way...

Clear as mud?

BTW, I have laid 'hot' herbicide mixes down like this with paintbrush accuracy... and it still surprises me to go back to the field and see just how crisp the line is where the boom ends

Take care, Rob

The wire would make that pass going the other way a bit tough no? Without an obstacle totally agree. (edit) Also in photo 2 he is using that prop wash to "push" up wind against the wires. Would think it's just a swag but I've watched him do it time after time, just happened to have the camera that day.
The helicopter is rigged to be able to shut either or both sides off, although the tailrotor does the same thing as the prop if you are trying to hold a line with it as well. Farmers here plant onions row to row with RR corn. Glyphosate on the corn and select on the onions.

No apologies Rob, this is how I learn.

Meat Servo wrote: Glyphosate on the corn and select on the onions.

Ouch!

Yes on the wire, and that's why it got my curiosity. Right boom shut off is PFM when you can do it... when you can't?.... well.... you cant

cubscout,

Sorry man, but I really do have to agree with '55... It's a tough row to hoe... and then I'd have to agree with Skaly and Contact. If you really wanna pursue something like that, you'd be wayyyy ahead to buy an old 'Cat and have a ball and be safe in the event of an unforeseen boo-boo... and then after all that your good ole skywagon will still be in as good a shape as she is now

Take care, Rob

I've been told that if you notify the wind generator folk they can shut them down and rotate so the blades are skinny with the way you fly your passes. My cousins are farming big and getting about 12 turbines. On one nice 80 they own they are getting two that will be placed on the edge of the field and will be worth about $16,000 a year in rent. Kind of makes it so what ever you can farm out of it look like gravy.

Aeropod,
Something you're Dad might be interested in is pipeline patrol. It is a 200' deal rather than 2' but still interesting. Uncle Rick, Brenco owner at Durango, was a SOB, but paid well and has to be pretty old now. The patrol companies all prefer old guys. If your Dad doesn't want to fly BAP junk, he could sub contract with the 185. Some of us old guys are really good, but we are a little beat up and slower than we used to be. I used to be quick as snot, which is required for ag.

Nah rob. I've never used one seen one or anything. Known about it and would love to have it but no experience with it all. Be great tool. I just figured on top of what your saying it would have a few other good uses as well. Kinda like meat servo was saying. Blowing it in to a tree line or up under the wires and such. Sometimes I fly outside the wires banked over slipping pretty good and that's be real nice to not have the high side on spraying needlessly into the air. And I would think that only using half a boom while doing that would be a great gallon saver on some of our big ass fields. I sometimes can use over a 100 gallons easy trimming! And half of that is pretty much double covering using the while boom! Or I may have a 2-3 mile run sometimes that's only 30' wide due to how the passes lay out. Totally ignorant here. Just curious if those would be legit areas to utilize that. Hell I just got flow control last year!

Cool pics and discussion guys!

I know Mr. Servo's outfit. He seems like a pretty reserved dude, as is his Pop. I've been trying to think back...I betcha his "boss" has been at it for a good 40 years, maybe more. Pretty sure he started with a Super Cub. Yes it is beautiful country, starts about 5000' and goes up from there. Not a field without a wire of some kind and a 30 acre patch is a big one. Those guys definitely know their way around the money handle.

Hi Marty.
Man the ONLY people that benefit from these eye sore one day to be dinosaurs is the crooked ones that got them in here, the manufacturers, the crews installing them and the landlords.
The landlords temporarily. Heard of many a case where they quit paying them as well. Some even down here barely 2 years old.
They make no economic since whatsoever aside from being hideous to look at, a real joy to fly in, and the constant humming noise the nearby people get to hear continuously.
Without the subsidies they die overnight. If they produced this would not be so.
Guess could start a whole other thread in itself and don't want to get to side tracked on them. I hate them. I hate what they stand for and hate how the wool is pulled over the American publics eyes. But that's many of things now. These things I just have to see and be reminded of daily.

'55, agreed totally on the windmills...

As for the boom shut off...
Sorry man, of course there are a million ways to skin a cat and just as many ways to use the skinner... It is nice to be able to cut your swath in half sometimes, and yes for many reasons besides drift control

And yes, since 10 GPA is the standard here (and it only goes up from there...) I am all too familiar with how much we burn through trimming things up

Meat, I use the prop wash sometimes as well.... and again, I wasn't being critical, just curious, and like you said.. trying to learn another trick!
As for what I woulda done... shoot I dunno, I wasn't doing the job! If it were a critical herbicide job, or a job that had produce that was ready for harvest right next-door, I wouldn't have used the prop wash (unless there was a reasonably stiff breeze away from the critical field) because I really don't want a big $$$ drift claim. In those cases I want solid control. I probably would have flown it the other way for one trim pass and then came around for another with the right wing over the wire (shut off) in a hard slip and the left wing down and in the field. It sounds like hell, looks spooky, but gets the job done just groovy... and yes I am aware of what cross controlling does to the pattern, but compared to the drift issue, for me it would be the lesser of the two evils.

I really enjoy this work, and really, really enjoy how many ways there are to skin the same cat

take care, Rob

I really, really hate casting a negative light in anyways on the ag industry... so that's really not the intent here, nor is to start a gloom and doom tone. I just thought I'd post these two pics to show some of what I interpreted Contacts post to mean with respect to the thought of flying a sky wagon in an ag operation if there are other means available....

In the first pic it was right in the middle of the busy season and everyone was pulling extremely long flying nights. I can't speak for the pilot, but as I recall, he literally flew right into the ground at full tilt cruise speed while looking at a map.... It was a boneheaded thing to do, but by all accounts he's a good stick and just had a bad day. He stepped out of this plane and walked right away. I can't imagine flying a monocoque fuselage into the ground, and surviving, certainly not one that was not designed for ag;



The next pic was my flying partner. A 30 year 30,000 hour veteran of night ag, both fixed and rotor...
First week back from IA, and no matter how long you've flown night work for, it only takes about two weeks away to lose your 'edge'... On this deal he let something else distract him, and found himself too far into the mountain to make the turn. He was so far in that he didn't even have time to dump, so he just snapped back the stick and spun it in... I can't think of many Cessna's that would let you spin it in at gross and survive....



Again, don't mean to be a 'negative nelly' as '55 would say... just food for thought...
Take care, Rob

Hey Guys,

I appreciate the insight. I know that this would be a tough road to go down. I just bought the gear because it was cheap and cool. I know I can unload it in South America or maybe down under. I have a few customers in the Pod biz down in NZ and Oz that I've been talking to, so finding a home for this shouldn't be an issue. Maybe even AK since I know a few guys have used the tank to haul fuel to outstations.

Cubscout...do I know you?

I have all the confidence in the world in my dad's ability to get this job done. Quite honestly, the biggest turnoff for me is the corrosion issue. That being said, putting this gear on would only get him part way to making a dollar. You guys have all kinds of tech today that Cessna never though of when they outfitted the 185 for spraying. To outfit the 185 with that now would be cost prohibitive, to say the least.

Love the pics, keep em coming.

Hi Jason, Any idea what the land owners get per generator down in Texas? Like I said, they are worth 7 or $8000 a year per turbine up here and Mid American Energy owns the ones going in around here so should be good for the 20 year design life. They have the base designed to knock the top layer off and fill back in with dirt and go back to farming it. A friend of mine has a brother in law that is a nuclear engineer. He has been over to China where they are going whole hog on new Nukes. Westinghouse sent some new monster water pumps over that don't work so having to spend big bucks to get them sent back over here for redesign. I'm thinking if they can't even get a simple water pump right, what's the complicated stuff going to be like----think Fukushima. I think I heard a million a piece for transportation. China is going nuke since they can't breath from all the coal smoke. I will have to admit, the wind project ain't all roses either. The cousins have a base that has to be removed since the cement they poured when it was zero out last Dec must not have cured right---that was a big waste but they had to get a certain amount of bases done before the end of the year to qualify for something. Did you hear about the Turbine Thrush pilot that hit a big wind turbine up in South Dakota a few weeks ago? He was bringing some guys home from a cattle sale in Texas in his Lance and tangled with one not far from his home.

'55,

Another thought occurred to me since you said you hadn't ran a boom shut off... This is just me, but on high gallonage work... IMHO if you're not running a decent flow control then you probably should either have an old school agronautics fan or not bother.... You can just imagine what shutting one boom off is going to do to your boom pressure if you have an externally adjustable fan such as a lane fan/brake the instant you pull that knob, or hit the switch ...

Blowing off a hose with something critical enough to have you running one boom is probably not the hot ticket ...

Thought Luke might enjoy this pocket rocket ... I'm usually not a big 'brand G' fan, but this little bugger was a really sweet flyer... Lot's of cool little thoughts in it too, like rear view mirrors, a mirror in the hopper, a totally clear (tinted) top, etc... fun airplane!



The next pic is in Martys neighborhood, and is for the benifit of those that have not experienced a windmill up close... to put the size into perspective just look at the cross country sized 'H' poles running parallel to the wind turbines. If you look really close you might be able to spot the standard 3 strand wires running between the H poles and the windmills...


Take care, Rob

The next pic is in Martys neighborhood, and is for the benifit of those that have not experienced a windmill up close.

Rob, if you make up here this summer, tell them to shut down and rotate to your liking. Should be better than dealing with a big tree or pivot then.