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Old 21st Sep 2010, 14:57
  #9 (permalink)  
vaibronco
 
Join Date: Apr 2009
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Hot refueling

It's not a matter of speed. In Italy it's a compromise with payload, fuel, performance and costs in multi fractioned vineyards.(Or rice fields for mosquito fighting). A turbine machine would not help. Some of the fields take about 20 seconds to be sprayed, some take 5 minutes and very often they are not one close to each other. We use to refuel few liters with the hose at each landing, depending on type of nozzles, terrain, moving very often the truck to optimize the job. It is not the scenario with thousands of acres all in the same property and field to be sprayed following the GPS.
If all 300s doing AG spraying in Italy had to shut down and startup for refueling all the times they did, this branch of our little helicopter industry would have disappeared much faster.
We use to refuel with jerrycans only during pipeline patrol and after full stop.
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