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Aviation History
1959
1959 - 1389.PDF
672 FLIGHT The Toy that Grew Up . . . The helicopter's ability to seed land is no less impressive. Ona large-scale reseeding programme in Oklahoma, a Bell 47 dis- tributed seeds at the rate of approximately 13 lb per acre, at anaverage of 7.27 acres per minute. Less than three hours of flying time were required to cover 1,200 acres. Similar work has beendone in the past few weeks by another 47 operated by Hawk Helicopters, this time in Louisiana. As part of the biggest-everpine forest direct seeding operation, the aircraft covered almost 6,000 acres in three days, leaving a further 14,000 acres to beseeded by fixed-wing aircraft. At the end the relative costs and efficiency of the two methods are to be compared; the result willmean a lot of business for somebody, as a total of 92,000 acres has to be seeded within the next three years. America's forests are already making considerable demands onthe services of charter operators in other ways. For example, during 1958 commercial helicopters flew almost 2,500 hours onfirefighting and forestry patrol missions, and this work has grown into a $250,000 per year business in the state of California. In aprogramme aimed at increasing the effectiveness of the aircraft, some 11,400 small landing sites known as "helispots" have been cleared in national forests in that State, with an objective of 14,000by 1961. The need for prompt action is emphasized by the com- putation that a brush fire can generate as much heat and energy inseven to ten minutes as did the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. If an outbreak is discovered in time it can be dealt with by athree-man crew despatched by helicopter and dropped at the near- est convenient helispot. More potent fires are "bombed" withwater or firefighting chemicals. Full-scale fires are contained by spraying the timber or brush in unburned areas with solutionswhich will stop the fire. Before long a powerful new weapon may be added to the firefighting armoury—armoury in a quiteliteral sense, for the idea is to replace the warhead of Sidewinder air-to-air guided missiles with a solid-foam-type chemical capableof extinguishing high-intensity fires, and then to launch the mis- siles, from a platform suspended beneath a hovering helicopter.The idea is by no means impractical, since the Sidewinder is an infra-red "heat-seeker" and would almost certainly home on thehottest part of the fire—though admittedly that is not always the best part to attack. It is not so easy to accept a suggestion that similar methodscould be used against fires in industrial plants, oil refineries and Many Hiller H-23D Raven helicopters are employed by the U.S. Army: this example supports Nike missile bases in California (Top) One of the three Bell 47Dls currently being oper- ated by Autair Ltd. on oil exploration in West Bengal. The drill is boring holes for seismic shot-tiring A curious outline is pre- sented by the U.S. Army Raven (small picture) en- gaged in salvaging portions of a crashed fixed-wing aircraft (Left) Casualty evacuation en masse: the Fairey Roto- dyne about to display its ambulance abilities at an Army demonstration "Flight" photograph
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