You might be surprised to know that a passel of S-55's and S-58's are still making their living in Washington State in the U.S., employed in the job of drying cherries after it rains. (See, cherries absorb water through the stem and can swell and burst. Plus, water droplets on cherries can act as a little magnifying glass when the sun comes back out, leaving a little burn mark. Enough "splits" and "culls" and the farmer can lose the entire crop when the packing plant rejects it. Helicopters blow and shake the cherries dry. And yes, it's cost-effective.)
Anyway, there are dozens of helicopters used as cherry-dryers - mostly small ships like R-44's and the like. But they're puny and they typically dry only one row of trees at a time. An S-55 or S-58 can dry up to four or five rows at a time without banging the cherries together and causing bruising.
And so there are a couple of companies using the old Sikorskys. One has eight or nine S-58's; the other has eight S-55's. The S-58's are probably always destined to have radial piston engines, as the *only* turbine conversion involves the Pratt & Whitney PT6 Twin-Pac. The S-55's can be converted to a single Garrett TPE-331, and the S-55 operator has three (so far). The plan is to have them all converted to turbine power...eventually. About the same fuel burn but the oil costs go down dramatically! And no 900-hour TBO.
After a career of flying turbines, three summers ago I was lured up to Washington State to fly one of the S-55's. This year they offered me one of the turbines. Call me an idiot, but I turned it down, preferring to stay in "my" ship...the one I've been flying all along...N955TC...the one with the Wright R-1300.
It's amazing to me that these tough old gals can still be out there, making money all these years later. I'm 57 and some of the ships in our fleet are as old as me. Granted, they don't fly very much (only a couple of months out of the year, and not much flight time either), but they still serve a useful purpose.
Radial engines forever!
Here's a picture of one of our radial-engine ships alongside our latest acquisition, one with the Garrett turbine.
