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Aviation History
1983
1983 - 0092.PDF
BUSINESS AVIATION Dakotas join UK oil-pollution control fleet Harvest Air has converted two Dakotas for the UK Department of Trade oil- pollution control unit. The conversion involved fitting two tanks in the cabin to hold l,200gal of dispersant. Two 10ft spray booms are mounted under the tail. The tank/tail-boom spray con version is designed and manu factured by Aero Union of California. The work took about four months and is said to have cost about £65,000. Loading by hose and lightweight pump takes about five minutes. A full load can be dropped from about 50ft in lomin to cover an area of around 100 acres. The DC-3s will back up Islanders already in service. One will be based in Kinloss and one at Exeter. The eight Islanders have been deployed in pairs at Kinloss, Prestwick, and Exeter. Several minor slicks around the East Anglian coastline have been treated in the first six months of operations. f-<Tr*t' = ru-- It.: *;::;: :-.j,.t.? 'm- Two Dakotas converted by Harvest Air have joined a fleet of eight Britten-Norman Islanders engaged in oil- pollution control work for the British Department of Trade around the UK coast Chinese use Y-ll in ag operations The Y-ll transport aircraft which first flew in the mid- 1970s has been used in Chinese ag work. Fifteen of these "An-2-replacements" have flown top dressing and pest-control operations over 16,000 hectares (40,000 acres) of forest and farmland. The type is primarily used for ag, forest, and geophysical-survey work. Its turbine daughter- aircraft, the Y-11T1, will be used in geophysical survey operations. Later Y-11T2 air craft with more powerful P&W PT6A-27 engines are said to have much shorter take-off performance, and to have a 4,500kg (9,9201b) take off weight for ag operations. Agricultural aviation is overseen by CAAC, the ad ministration which operates all civil aircraft in China. The Antonov An-2 (Yunshuji-5) is the main agricultural aircraft. It is reported as still in pro duction at Shijiuzhuang in the last two years. About 500 are available for agricultural use. Main ag unit is Air Corps No 17, which operates in the south-western provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou (Kwei- chow), and Sichuan (Sze- chuan). A number of Chinese An-2s are said to have been flown with turbine engines. Agricultural seasons in China are short, as elsewhere, and aircraft and pilot util isation is not high. Pilots are said to average not much more than lOOhr/year. Pilot-to- aircraft ratio is between two and three. Aircrew are trained by CAAC. An experienced pilot always has a lower-time pilot flying copilot to gain on- the-job experience. Aircraft are used for insect control, fertilising, seeding, and rodent control. They fly 5-15m above the crop. Swath width is 20-40m, depending upon application. CAAC supplies the ground- support, loading and flagging requirements, with a crew of around ten men per aircraft with necessary vehicles and equipment. The An-2 carries around 300gal of spray. Few (if any) helicopters are used for agricultural work, although they might be con sidered in the future. They are being used for oil and energy exploration. Four helicopters are used for forest-fire protec tion in the Peking area, and two An-2s for forest seeding and other activities. Early in each spring, farm communes will contract with CAAC to perform aerial pest- control work. The cost will come out of the crop- production value. However, a new system of land division among the farmers creates individual incentives. As a result, most areas have scat tered small-field cropping, with small acreages not adapt able to aerial application. In the northeast there are large State-run farms, where the Government uses aerial application. Shengyang in Liaoning province is a base for forest and agricultural crop work. Changchum in Jilin province, and Harbin in Heilongjiang province, are bases for work with beans and wheat. In the northwest, Urumqi (Xinjiang province) serves State farms needing pest con trol on rice and cotton. Varied agricultural and forestry seed ing is carried out in the West Central area from Chengdu in Sichuan province. Aerial sow ing of rice paddy fields in 1980-81 at a number of State farms is said to have almost doubled crops. The local government in several of the central prov inces pays CAAC for the aerial work in support of the commune farmers. This in cludes work on wheat and cot ton from the Zhengzhov base in Henan province; vegetables from Hefei base in Anhwei province and from Hengyang base in Hunan province. In the south, rice seeding is re ported from Canton in Kwangtung province. One more active use of air craft is forestry seeding, fertil ising and spraying. Govern ment statistics show that 150,000 hectares (380,000 acres) of trees have been planted on barren hills in Yunnan, Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong, and Liaoning provinces including Peking and Tianjin. Aircraft seeding of forests began in 1958 and has been done in 500 moun tainous regions to a total area of 12 million hectares. 120 FLIGHT International, 15 January 1983
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