Crop Spraying
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Norfolk UK
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We also used to pay around £/acre or £7.50/hectare for spreading fertiliser (ammonium nitrate 34.5%N) in the 80's.
Used it mostly on trial plots to eliminate the tractor wheeling damage to the crop.
The chap used a Pawnee which carried 500kgs payload,and he handled it like a fighter around low level obstacles!
I imagine the current fuel prices would hike the cost up quite a bit nowadays.
We also used a helicopter,again flown incredibly close to power cables and trees but somehow not quite as impressive as the fixed wing stuff.
Lister
Used it mostly on trial plots to eliminate the tractor wheeling damage to the crop.
The chap used a Pawnee which carried 500kgs payload,and he handled it like a fighter around low level obstacles!
I imagine the current fuel prices would hike the cost up quite a bit nowadays.
We also used a helicopter,again flown incredibly close to power cables and trees but somehow not quite as impressive as the fixed wing stuff.
Lister
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Lincs
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OPPORTUNITIES FOR AERIAL APPLICATION
Nouseforaname: Don't mention crop spraying when you apply for planning permission. If you do, you will have every green-wellied tree-hugger within a thousand miles objecting to your application. If you are only going to spray your crops 15 times a year (that number of times you must be talking blight in spuds in a very hot and very wet summer) you should operate off a convenient field headland or farm roadway, which under the 28-day rule does not require planning permission. We have frequently operated Pawnees out of convenient pastures or stubble fields.
Moateair: Dont bank on the granular stuff. Many farmers in the main agricultural areas (Lincs/East Anglian fens) are going over to liquid fertilisers. Trouble with that stuff is that it has to go on at such a rate that a Pawnee pilot would need to be heaving on the dump handle to get it out of the hopper at a high enough rate. You are right to say that aircraft come into their own when we have a wet spring, but when did that last happen? You can no longer afford to keep aircraft and crews on stand-by, and pay the CAA fees and insurance, for the calls that may never come. Seeding stubble turnips was a nice little job for the Pawnee - until 2001 when, for a year, foot & mouth came and stopped sheep being brought from the north to the barley stubbles in East Anglia.
Moateair: Dont bank on the granular stuff. Many farmers in the main agricultural areas (Lincs/East Anglian fens) are going over to liquid fertilisers. Trouble with that stuff is that it has to go on at such a rate that a Pawnee pilot would need to be heaving on the dump handle to get it out of the hopper at a high enough rate. You are right to say that aircraft come into their own when we have a wet spring, but when did that last happen? You can no longer afford to keep aircraft and crews on stand-by, and pay the CAA fees and insurance, for the calls that may never come. Seeding stubble turnips was a nice little job for the Pawnee - until 2001 when, for a year, foot & mouth came and stopped sheep being brought from the north to the barley stubbles in East Anglia.
Join Date: Nov 2005
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Your quite right of course. The small amount of available work, and the high costs associated with getting set up in the first place now make it a definate non-starter. Our aircraft used to do the winter in Greece just to keep them busy all year round. They've since been exported out there permenantly, so I don't know what became of them. For each aircraft we had 2 support wagons, each with a crew of 3, plus pilot, plus ground 'mapper' who worked a day or so ahead of the aircraft, so a team of 8 per aircraft. Crikey, doing the sums on that would make it far too expensive at todays rates to even consider.
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Can't read the phrase Crop Spraying these days with a straight face since reading Roger's Profanisaurus. To quote:
crop spraying v. To have diarrhoea. As opposed to cable laying (qv). A doctor may enquire: 'So what's the old ****ter been up to then? Cable laying or crop spraying?'
Sorry about lowering the tone a bit
.
crop spraying v. To have diarrhoea. As opposed to cable laying (qv). A doctor may enquire: 'So what's the old ****ter been up to then? Cable laying or crop spraying?'
Sorry about lowering the tone a bit
.
