About the oddest thing I've seen spread from a helicopter was pelleted sphagnum moss, in 2010:
More at
A busy day on the moors - Alan's Ramblings and
Sphagnum Project | Moors for the Future
The same folks also built a device for spreading heather brash (chopped heather) by helicopter which wasn't
entirely successful when asked to deal with blocks of wet, frozen heather
Airborne muckspreader - Alan's Ramblings
All this work has been done as part of the Moors For the Future project in the UK, which is doing moorland restoration work in the South Pennines between Manchester and Sheffield - you've probably been over it if you've ever flown into Manchester. Because the area is a peat bog, everything has to be flow in by helicopter and to minimise wildlife disturbance it all has to be done in the depth of winter:
There's a Bell 205 (think that's what it is) here at the moment. The statistics are quite impressive, all of this was transported by helicopter, and this is just for one of the areas they are working on:
- 10,000 - 15,000 bags of heather brash spread
- 10km geo-textiles laid
- Hundreds of tons of lime, seed, fertiliser applied
- Gully blocking 1,000 heather bale dams and 1700 stone dams (over one year)
This project has now been running to 10 years and I'm guessing it is probably the biggest and longest-running project making use of helicopters that the UK has ever seen.
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