The Life of a Cherry Drying Pilot (2009)
aneclecticmind.com
aneclecticmind.com
There are 2 routes to paying for flight training with the GI Bill that I'm aware of: through an "institute of higher learning" (usually a community college) or directly through a flight school. If you go with the first option, the VA will pay for the whole thing as long as your PPL instructors are employees of the college. If you go directly through a flight school the VA will only pay the lesser of $10,000/year or the actual cost of training.
Another benefit of going through a college is that the degree program has higher minimum flight hour requirements than the rating itself. At the school I went through, you had to fly 75 hours to finish the PPL semester even if it only took you 50 hours to get through the check ride. That means when you finish with CFII you have enough hours to start instructing right away.
If you are a veteran with post-9/11 GI Bill benefits remaining and want to be a pilot, now is an incredible time. The job market is booming and you can get the training free. Even if you have to pay out of pocket for the PPL (which I have heard has become the case since I started) it's still amazing.
You must have gone a path other than immediately to CFI after you got your commercial fixed — or your idea of relatively quickly is a little more patient than mine.
[1] https://grapecollective.com/articles/frost-fighters-the-heli...
[2] https://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/241735-flying-frost-protec...
[3] https://www.wineaustralia.com/getmedia/6740ada2-1be7-4e3e-b0...
Another common use of helicopters in a rural environment is aerial mustering, this one does not really need explanation:
He says the cherries split or mold if left wet for a short time, so he has to be on call in all daylight hours (17h) ... but what about when it rains in the 7 nighttime hours? Is it the sun-drying of the wet cherries that causes the damage?
I wonder about these sort of pieces whether they're just equipping others to drive them or if business. He says it's already highly competitive, sounds like a firm could drive the soloists out of business by undercutting them (maybe that's happening now), then pushing up prices later.
I can't believe you can't undercut with a massive set of fans on a "cherry picker"-type vehicle (maybe paired with a shaker-harvest system).
Her name is Maria Langer, bio: https://www.aneclecticmind.com/bio/
FWIW the English generic pronoun is he.
I wonder if the author cares, what seems more pertinent is that she's an experienced pilot and good writer.
It's possible that rot is a long-term problem (cherries wet for more than one day) and the splitting is indeed caused very quickly by the rain / sun combination, but I think the issue is that the work is just too dangerous during night hours.
As cool as this all seems....if you happen to live near an orchard, or in my case, the helipad - it appears to be a horrible inefficient and nuisance way to solve the issue.
I do wish there was another option.
Makes me wonder if they couldn't use poly tunnels.
Flying at night is great. The air is usually smooth and stable. The lights below are nice to look at, especially near water. If things go wrong at night however, it can get ugly. The fatality rate for nighttime aviation accidents is significantly higher.
* Speed - 65 KIAS (best glide)
* At 200 ft AGL: Landing Lights - ON
* If you don't like what you see: Landing Lights - OFF
Yes, I was thinking mount some fans on top of those giant rolling irrigation rigs.
Many years ago, when I was young and foolish, I thought being a crop duster pilot was the bees knees; also easier to get into with low hours, and who knows, maybe after spraying enough potato, a coveted airline job. Little did I know! It turns out the level of skill required to do the job is very high, the lifestyle not so great when you get older, and no, it's not necessarily easier to get into.
Ultimately I didn't become a pilot, but an engineer. Looking back, I'm happy with my choice and my life as it is now. Only occasionally do I watch aviation videos on YouTube and wonder "what if".
Thank you for a really cool article - and kudos to the guy drying cherries with his little Robinson!
I do believe it probably says something about preconceived notions that, of the mere half dozen comments accumulated so far, this mistake has been made twice already.
I read the article very quickly at work, on my phone, so I missed certain parts. I have saved it though, so I can enjoy it later in peace and quiet.
I don't tend to look up the author's name.
And finally, English isn't my first language. When the gender isn't immediately obvious I default to my own.
Humans are.
And there was no ambiguity - the author's name, "Maria", was at the top of the article.
I suspect that most people tend to read in their own gender in absence of other cues? I have a strong memory of going through the first chapter of a book completely misgendering the protaganist. Fortunately it wasn't a "doctor -> man" bias situation, just "person walking through park describing view/situation", otherwise I'd have been super angry at myself.
Given the limited load capacity of aircraft I'd expect JetA to be the preferred route as that is actually more energy-dense than 100LL. Both ethanol as well as (something resembling) JetA can be made from renewable sources so there is no advantage either way in that respect.
That said it is not feasible to run an engine made for 100LL on JetA while conversion to ethanol in theory can be achieved without too much effort - bigger jets on a carburettor, adjusted injection mappings for fuel injection, all seals and gaskets need to be compatible with ethanol which tends to cause swelling and eventual failure in many types of synthetics.
I've converted a few motorcycle engines to run on E85 as that is a more economical fuel here in Sweden. I did the same for some smaller engines and am trying to get a chain saw to run reliably on this fuel. The big advantage here is that the exhaust fumes from E85 are far less noxious than those from petrol or syngas. The problem is that these are 2-stroke engines which depend on a fuel-oil mixture for crankcase lubrication. There are not that many suitable lubricants which mix well with E85.
> Cherry growers have long tried to find ways to dry the cherries and prevent the rot/split problems. They put fans on tall poles in their orchards and run blowers up and down the rows. But this isn’t usually effective. Enough rain in those last few weeks can destroy the entire crop.
> Sometime in the past — maybe 10 or 15 years ago? — someone had the idea of using the downwash of helicopters hovering over the cherry trees to blow the branches around and shake the water off the cherries. This was extremely effective and apparently well worth the cost.
> “Cherry drying” by helicopter was born.
I was expecting something like spraying a desiccant. This is so much cooler. But pretty sad in terms of carbon emissions. Can this be done by drone?
Does this explain the whole cheaper class of split cherries you can buy during cherry season in New York, usually from street vendors?
The fans they were likely talking about are probably the horizontal-style fans you see in orchards for (mainly) frost prevention (they look like small windmills).
But why not very large rotor fans - maybe mounted HVLS fans, perhaps a bit larger, and maybe spinning a bit faster. Surely something like those would be cheaper to install and run 24/7 - assuming they worked as well?
I've always thought a job with this feature (lots of down time) would be perfect for a developer who likes to hack on personal projects. E.g. liquor store owner
From my armchair I wonder what the reason is for not having a ground-based solution. Running a small vehicle (lawnmower-size?) with a fan mounted on top between the trees seems like a much more economic way to have the same effect.
Is there not enough space between the trees to pass through (but then, how would they harvest)?
Do the trees suffer, branches break if the air flow comes from below / from the side?
I imagine the important part of the "drying" process/action is being able to give the branches a bloody good shake to dislodge the water droplets. It's likely that even very large fans aren't capable of moving that much air (compared to a helicopter's blades). Then there's also the question of even if you could trundle around the orchard with a set of fans able to push that much air I can imagine it would be comedically unstable and dangerous :)
[edit: typo]
I imagine your typical 5-ish liter v8 coupled to a big centrifugal blower is more than capable of providing a "bloody good shake"
The capital costs to get ground-supported fans above the trees and the maintenance costs of operating them are likely much higher than just buying your own helicopter and training as a RW pilot. Given that, the farmer might as well rent the helicopter and RW pilot.
I imagine a 10m fan mounted in a moving carriage, on a serpentine track supported by tall poles, and powered by electrified rails in the track. Then you'd need a shed for the working fan, the backup fan, and the repair parts, plus the generator and fuel storage. It would cost less than the helicopter to operate, but the capital costs seem like they'd be much higher, especially since every orchard block would essentially be a custom job, and helicopters can be factory-built.
Maybe you could do double duty by also having a sprayer carriage that can use the same track?
The helicopter overcomes its own weight. So, a similarly effective ground based solution would have to push up so much air as to push into the ground with at least twice its weight (well, or be heavier than a heli). Might run a risk of getting stuck.
Next, the heli rotor blades are above the tree line, where there are no branches and no trunk. A ground based solution would necessarily be between the trunks. You'd have to not only protect the rotating blades by ducting them, but also have a much harder time navigating.
Finally, helicopters exist already and have other use cases. Ground based vehicle would have to be specifically designed and built, and would not be useful for much else.
Obviously not all hp are equal and you get into a discussion of cfm, specific impulse, etc, etc. but power/area should be a pretty ok proxy for drying power.
It shouldn't be that hard to build something that looks like the bastard child of a concrete pumper and a pine mulch blower that can either fit in the bed of a pickup or runs off a tractor PTO and can apply more than enough airflow to destroy your crop if you use it wrong. Maybe include a big rubber hose (like those temporary water mains) on the vehicle to give the tree trunks a good whack as you drive by.
Is this natural for cherries? To be so vulnerable to a little water that they split/rot within a few hours? Seems odd, for a plant that lives outdoors.
Have cherries always been this way, across the centuries? Or is this an unexpected consequence of some GMO shenanigans?
In SA, rain in the JHB area is in the summer and in the Cape it's in the winter. So, either you try to plant in an area which harvests before the rain (JHB) or after the rain (the Cape).
In both cases you could end up trying to aim for a period where there is rain that falls overlapping the harvest period.
Using helicopters as dryers seems very kludgy, expensive, and dangerous and little more than a stop-gap measure until something better comes along.
Certainly a robotic mid-sized to large helicopter-like drone designed to primarily hover would be safer and cheaper. It could have long legs (taller than cherry trees) and fans on the side to assist drying and to reduce energy consumption (it could set on the ground during drying and only lift off to change trees). A little fuzzy logic to control positioning and movement and boom - a new product!
But for the longest time, starting about 20 years ago, I thought I had developed an allergy to apples because no matter what I did to clean them, including peeling the skin, I still had a badly itching throat and all my "usual" food allergy symptoms.
Then after I bought a property that had wild apple trees and i found that I could eat the sweet ones with no issues, and could also eat the apples growing at a friend's house, I realized there was something being sprayed on commercial apples that I had an allergic reaction to.
In short, the less crap that's sprayed onto my food, the better. So yeah, I'd rather pay more for cherries (I'm allergic to raw ones anyway!) than have to deal with the side effects of whatever water repellent is applied.
I'd like to think you're being sarcastic here, but fear you may not be.
What's wrong with food being seasonal and local? Personally, I like it that what's available varies with the season; it gives me an extra incentive to try different things.
The result of industrialized food production and distribution has been a steady ongoing loss of food diversity. You can search for the stats from the FAO. I believe it's 75% of food diversity gone in the last century. 12 species providing for 75% of the world's nutritional needs.
The current system does not have food diversity as its goal, let alone taste or nutrition. It does a good job at nourishing the pockets of big businesses, that have an interest in turning all manner of food production and distribution into economies of scale by commoditizing (as in "commoditize your complements") the product. Uniformity and shelf-life win, farmers lose.
I've seen all this happen right where I live (Panama). Tasteless tomatoes, thanks to having Nestle as the main buyer. A local cultivar of Dioscorea (Yam) almost gone, when Frito Lay's told farmers what cultivar they wanted, which exposed the local cultivar to a disease. Countless edible plants and fruits, better suited for the climate and environment, have become simply unknown to people, as cattle farming took over thanks to the introduction of herbicides (it's also destroying the Darien rainforest, and violently displacing indigenous communities, btw). I could go on and on. Meanwhile, you have technicians (Ingenieros Agronomos) talking about such great achievements as tropicalized potatoes. It makes me think of the Great Irish Famine.
So there you have it, food from all around the planet, and the whole planet producing mostly the same. We are going full circle from abundance to scarcity. You have to then question people inferring rather unfoundedly that it is the abundance of food (along a sedentary lifestyle) what is driving the obesity-related chronic disease pandemic. You have to wonder what is abundance. Mindlessly following the commoditization trend has driven us to unquestioningly counting food only by such fungible measures as USD, kg, and calories, as if humans fed on food like cars feed on gas. And this brings us to that process that I think is parallel to the commoditization of food: the turning of humans into machines.
Meat only when it's snowing.
Something big is coming, and I feel like I’m going to get the business end of it.
Sometime in the past (maybe 10 or
15 years ago?) someone had the
idea of using the downwash of
helicopters hovering over the
cherry trees to blow the branches
around and shake the water off
the cherries.
I bet paying a pilot, who operates at price to cover their own expenses, fuel and a paycheck, is still less expensive than the partial loss of any harvest that receives this coverage, and crop dusting pilots are technically an equivalent operation, but I’m thinking that there are better ways to keep cherries dry, and that rain showers aren’t the only thing water log a cherry tree, right?
For whom? I think anyone who'd been near an operating helicopter and thought "gee, I need a really big fan once in a while" would've eventually put two and two together.
> * there are better ways to keep cherries dry, and that rain showers aren’t the only thing water log a cherry tree, right?*
Think about the plus sides- the grower doesn't have to buy a bunch of fans, deal with maintenance, or do any other number of things, and the helicopter pilot gets "guaranteed income" (though, like all growing is, that depends a lot upon the season), flying hours, and can so other things in the waiting time. Maria, the author of the blog post, mentions elsewhere that she makes jewelry in her waiting time, which she can then sell or do whatever with.
It's a big different from your standard 9-to-5 job, but personally, I think it's a beautiful symbiotic relationship.