Among the most dangerous jobs in the United States are timberjack and aircraft pilot. Combining the two wouldn’t sound like a recipe for success, but in fact it makes the job of trimming trees near pipelines and power lines much safer. That’s what this helicopter-suspended chainsaw does. And it definitely doesn’t look safe, either, but here we are.
The saw is equipped with ten two-foot diameter saws and is powered by a 28 horsepower engine which is separate from the helicopter itself. The pilot suspends the saw under the helicopter and travels along the trees in order to make quick work of tree branches that might be growing into rights-of-way. It’s a much safer (and faster) alternative that sending out bucket trucks or climbers to take care of the trees one-by-one.
Tree trimming is an important part of the maintenance of power lines especially which might get overlooked by the more “glamarous” engineering aspects of the power grid. In fact, poor maintentance of vegitation led to one of the largest blackouts in recent history and is a contributing factor in a large number of smaller power outages. We can’t argue with the sentiment around the saw, either.
I bet it is not going to take long before the saw gets stuck into something and throws the helicopter in the power lines.
Or, you know, touch power lines. I believe they already thought about such situations and added some disengaging mechanism.
Normally a helicopter is isolated from ground so they can clip onto the power line to bring the helicopter to the same potential and then just work away.
click in about a minute on this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tzga6qAaBA
But if the helicopter cutting branches (which would be earthed), unless the chainsaw are electrically isolated.
The saw would only need extremely small wires (relatively speaking. 30 gauge or smaller) going back up to the chopper to control the saw. The strength of the boom can be from plastics or fiberglass, which wouldn’t conduct electricity. The motor to run the saw is at the end of the boom along with the saw blades. And they have remote releases if needed.
A better approach to isolation that would be better than making the wires as small as possible would be to use pneumatic controls.
I thought about cutting into power lines. I know it’s isolated.
It can be detached if it gets stuck, obviously.
Multiple companies have been operating these things since the 1980’s.
Yeah, super safe…
https://www.ajc.com/news/crime–law/just-helicopter-pilot-airlifted-hospital-after-hitting-tree-north-georgia/pDc6knZjrsf54rKXwbRUSM/
You know, like all other helicopter crashes where afterwards helicopter and crew remain perfectly healthy.
This one is more fun: Deer Hunter Leaps From Tree To Escape Helicopter Tree Trimmer
https://www.fieldandstream.com/blogs/field-notes/2013/10/deer-hunter-leaps-tree-escape-helicopter-tree-trimmer/
So it’s being done without even any warning (to humans, let alone animals) on private land. It’s undoubtedly effective at cutting things, seems like more care should be taken.
Helicopters are not quiet, chainsaws are not quiet.
If he didn’t hear it coming, then it’s his own damn fault.
If there’s a helicopter flying near me I don’t think “I’m not safe on the ground”. Even if I did think that it wouldn’t be obvious what it was about to do. Even if it were obvious what it was about to do it wouldn’t be obvious which way it was going to go.
There are very many issues just with that line of thinking. There are also issues with assuming everyone and everything has hearing good enough to notice an approaching helicopter, and when it comes to animals an appropriate response to a very weird threat.
I have a client whose saw caught and his copter crashed doing this and is now a quadriplegic. Very dangerous work.
Hasn’t Rambo used one hehe
Is it a chainsaw, or a chain of saws?
Yes.
I knew I’d seen this before. I went to high school with this guy.
Did he have any other inventions we should worry about?
I would presume all of them.
Most “dangerous job” aircraft pilot ?? Really ? where are the authenticated / peer reviewed stats to back that up ? Article linked mentions “1000 hrs” (to fly the rig on a helo). 1000 hrs is nothing for a commercial pilot. It’s the bare minimum for entry into the fly-for-a-living world of turbine powered aircraft.
I fly both rotary wing (Bell 429), and fixed wing (corporate jet – Citation X), my hours are a *lot* more than 1000. Heck, the training school (Flight Safety) their pre-requisite is 1000 hrs in your log book before they even accept you as a student for a type rating.
I feel safer in the air, with the strict draconian regulations for ATC, and commerical pilots in general – vs – the morons we encounter daily on the highways and roadways. What we should do is mandate drivers licensees be held to the same strict standards we have in aviation (constant testing, written/oral exams, medicals, background checks). It’ll probably put an end to the idiocy of ‘soccer moms’ doing their make up while driving a 2 ton piece of lethal steel at 70 mph, or drugged up truckers.
“Most “dangerous job” aircraft pilot ?? Really ? where are the authenticated / peer reviewed stats to back that up ?”
Probably from the same people that have to be reported to when people die (especially flying), from the government, to insurance.
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/01/08/most-dangerous-jobs-us-where-fatal-injuries-happen-most-often/38832907/
Fatalities mainly transportation related. So maybe your colleagues are just bad car drivers and die on their way home?
No. Faulty interpretation of numbers from an organization having ‘semi-professional’ journalists.
Per DoT numbers, commercial aviation fatality rates do not make the top 100 list. What these morons have done is lump in all aviation incidents (to include general aviation private pilots and “sport” pilots and “recreational” pilots and student pilots. Sports and recreational pilots do not even have to have a FAA medical certificate. General aviation accident rates are about an order of magnitude greater than commercial and ATR pilots.
likely also includes GA, which are significantly less safe… inexperienced pilots (I’ve nearly had a mid-air collision due to morons taking off inactive runways and flying their own made up patterns…), vmc into imc, single engine just isnt as reliable etc.
I’m pretty sure the word chainsaw undeniably refers to a saw that cuts with a toothed chain.
I don’t see any chains here…
This is an arrangement of hydraulically driven circular saws. The company that invented it names it “Air Saw” while the patent says “Airborne Tree Trimmer”.
Chainsaws are mentioned as a possible substitute for circular saws in special cases.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf — Bureau of Labour Statistics on most dangerous (by injury, fatality) jobs in the US. Wasn’t hard.
Chainsaw helicopter would be more interesting.
As dodged by James Bond in “The World is Not Enough” (1999)
Yup! I thought the same thing when I started seeing the .gif images of the saw in operation being shared by the IT crowd folks on twitter.com.
These things were shown in one of the less good Bond movies. The World is Not Enough, I think.
It was an alright film, they can’t all be hits but I think it was one of the better opening songs.
Though I admit that Dalton is my favorite Bond so many people think my taste in movies is a little suspect anyway.
Wow. I thought Roger Moore would have been a weird choice for favorite bond, but Dalton takes the cake. The only way you could have gone weirder would have been George Lazenby. You do you though. Somebody has to watch The Living Daylights…I guess. :)
Dalton is my favorite Bond but he’s not in what I would consider the best Bond films, I guess it’s all about the mental image I had of Bond reading the novels and Dalton is the closest to that image.
Came here for the pedantry. Was not disappointed.
Your sentances lack a subject.
Your post lacks a hack
food ingested earlier, double one, warm drink colloquial, pre Zonday ?
You misspelled sentences.
I guess BT is a grammar pedant and not a spelling pedant.
He also forgot that plural sentences would require plural subjects.
“I find your work is puerile and under-dramatized. You lack any sense of structure, character, and the Aristotelian unities” . – Wednesday Adams in The Adams Family.
I’ve seen these used. It’s, well like God Damn Army of Darkness meats Air Wolf. And yeah. I mean MEATS it.
I always thought it was a dumb idea to run power lines through the middle of a forest anyway
The alternative is better? What about running power lines in the middle of a metropolitan area?
Many of us live in areas where there is literally no alternative than running power lines through the trees. For example: The entirety of New England.
In many places, especially with Hydro dams in the middle of nowhere its either run the lines through a forest or don’t run them at all.
Chopper²
This is nothing new, in Sweden, Norway and Finland we have trimmed the trees close to power lines with tools like this for over a decade…
This is just one of the companies that offers this service: https://www.shtab.se/tj%C3%A4nster/kraftindustrin/r%C3%B6jning-s%C3%A5gning-2026135 (in Swedish).
Youtube: https://youtu.be/n3cVICzctfU
/// Marcus
something out of a Bond movie as I recall.
Reminds me of this scene: https://youtu.be/rF1vfMM3W08?t=132
video of this in action https://player.vimeo.com/video/361136640
You want danger near power lines? These guys get so close that a person sitting on the skid can reach out and touch the lines. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRddV43cr9I
extended Version (in German and with a lot of focus on safety:) https://www.wdrmaus.de/filme/sachgeschichten/fliegende_saege.php5