Yes Gomer, I've only seen a couple of examples and they were more in the line of satisfying a fetish rather than professional work.One was a 206 in Texas which after all is a state where big is big so they say, but their average cow ranch is around 14 head. Where I come from the average cattle station is 4500 head and staffing levels run at one per thousand head or less, so yeah machinery usage is high.The average pilot will probably muster 70,000 head per year in a thousand hours.
I do remember a pro outfit in Long Beach a long time ago, with a G5A.
What then will regulate the safety of your hog killers,? Certainly you have no shortage of quality low level ag pilots who with ten times the number of their cousins in Oz have only the same number of total accidents pa - quite impressive.
Over here even with a private land owner wanting to chase his own cows with his own privately employed private license holder is supposed to have a mustering rating, which of course comes after the low level rating.
There's not a lot to the training but the elements of 1) over pitching / decision / recovery or not / and how, and 2) downwind or self generated vortice entrapment / awareness of / keeping away from / recovery from , are probably the most important life savers if taught correctly.
All low level pilots (perhaps including HEMS) could be mandated to do a wires course I guess as over here you have an ag AG rep body, that would run them?
oh yes thanks Gemini, posted while I was dithering.
I had forgotten about your mad horses, and I have seen a couple of you-tubes of wild cow capture, with lariats and all sorts of fancy ticks, a la the deer capture but possibly madder. Horse mustering is the most dangerous by far, very fast work.
Last edited by topendtorque; 6th Feb 2013 at 20:33.
Reason: prompt form gemini