Gunner 0313
05-27-09, 12:23 PM
Power company takes on seasonal tree trimming
One flying saw covers more ground and cuts more limbs than up to 40 ax-wielding people.
<!--EndNoIndex-->By Tim Thornton (tim.thornton@roanoke.com)
381-1669 The saw apparatus can cut through 16 inches of tree and bark with ease. For larger limbs, it may need to take a second bite.<!--BeginNoIndex-->
<!--EndNoIndex-->
It came with an eruption of noise, an insistent, oscillating whirring and whumping that shook the air.
An automated voice on the phone had warned something like this might happen in the area, but this wasn't just in the area. This was practically in the back yard, right where the power company's right of way meets the railroad's right of way at the top of a hill that used to hold a colonial fort.
The tri-colored flying machine -- covered in broad stripes of blue and white and yellow -- moved just above the treetops, a mobile wind storm skimming slowly across the valley floor and partway up the other side.
The machine dangled a long stinger of a thing from its belly -- it could have been Paul Bunyan's hedge trimmer. Occasionally the whole apparatus would pause, hovering, maybe even yo-yoing a bit. Out of the din would come a shrieking, like a power saw ripping through lumber. Then a crackling. Then the machine moved on.
They call it "dressing the right of way."
A power line's greatest threat is a tree limb -- a limb that can be driven by snow or wind to snap a line and stop the flow of electricity. Someone has to prune those limbs back from power-carrying poles, lest every ice storm leave whole towns in the dark. For more than 20 years, Appalachian Power has done at least some of that trimming with a helicopter. And it's done that for one reason.
"Efficiency," said Appalachian Power Company spokesman Todd Burns.
In nine weeks, he said, one helicopter can accomplish as much as eight to 10 crews -- up to 40 people -- cutting and grubbing along the ground can do in a year. Put another way, it costs about $35 per tree to prune a power line's path with a ground crew. About $10 per tree with a helicopter.
If the weather is good, the cutting copters fly six days a week, covering as much as 15 miles in that time along the big power lines, as little as five miles when working next to the smaller lines that run through neighborhoods.
Not that most neighborhoods are likely to see such a thing.
"You obviously wouldn't want to be doing that in downtown Roanoke," Burns said.
It would likely cause a commotion if a McDonnell Douglas 500 helicopter buzzed Big Lick dangling a 90-foot-long boom and an 800-pound saw with 11 whirling blades.
The blades, each 2 feet across, are powered by a 25-horsepower gasoline engine.
"It's essentially a small tractor motor," said Ted McAllister, spokesman for Aerial Solutions, the North Carolina company that does all the aerial sawing for Appalachian Power.
The company has about a dozen pilots who do this sort of work. It takes a couple of years of training before they're turned loose on a job.
"Most of the pilots have really come to us seeking a challenge," McAllister said.
The challenge is to drag the huge saw beneath the helicopter and position it so it slices through what needs to be cut but avoids everything else.
"He's pretty much flying the saw," McAllister said of the airborne lumberjacks.
The apparatus can cut through 16 inches of tree and bark with ease, Burns said. For larger limbs, it may need to take a second bite.
Before they fly the saw, pilots fly along the route -- recon, McAllister called it -- to see what they'll have to deal with. But even with all that training and preparation, things go wrong. Sometimes the trimmed limbs fall on the lines the operation is meant to protect, cutting electrical service to at least a few customers.
"It happens frequently enough that we do send a crew along with the aerial saw," Burns said.
That's a line crew, ready to make repairs if the pruning goes awry.
That happened when the aerial saw was working in eastern Montgomery County about 10 days ago. A big sycamore branch crashed into a line while the helicopter was working on Boner's Run. The line crew was doing some maintenance just down the hill on Dark Run.
"He was a holler away when he was needed," Burns said of the repairman.
A day or two after trimming trees along the South Fork of the Roanoke River, the tri-color helicopter and its dangling giant trimmer were back at Aerial Solutions headquarters in Tubor City, about 20 miles north of North Myrtle Beach, S.C.
The company works year round, flying over the northern part of the country during warm months, heading south with the geese and the hawks when the weather begins to turn. But the flying stops for a few weeks every year for maintenance on all the rotors and the blades and the other moving parts that make airborne arboriculture possible.
They'll be back in the air early next month.
http://www.roanoke.com/images/nd/nrv122206a.jpg
Christina O'Connor | The Roanoke Times
An aerial saw from Aerial Solutions, hired by Appalachian Power to clear tree branches encroaching upon power lines, prepares to take off from a field behind Walnut Grove in Shawsville. The saw was cutting branches away from nearby power lines.
http://www.roanoke.com/images/nd/nrv122206b.jpg
http://www.roanoke.com/images/nd/nrv122206c.jpg
One flying saw covers more ground and cuts more limbs than up to 40 ax-wielding people.
<!--EndNoIndex-->By Tim Thornton (tim.thornton@roanoke.com)
381-1669 The saw apparatus can cut through 16 inches of tree and bark with ease. For larger limbs, it may need to take a second bite.<!--BeginNoIndex-->
<!--EndNoIndex-->
It came with an eruption of noise, an insistent, oscillating whirring and whumping that shook the air.
An automated voice on the phone had warned something like this might happen in the area, but this wasn't just in the area. This was practically in the back yard, right where the power company's right of way meets the railroad's right of way at the top of a hill that used to hold a colonial fort.
The tri-colored flying machine -- covered in broad stripes of blue and white and yellow -- moved just above the treetops, a mobile wind storm skimming slowly across the valley floor and partway up the other side.
The machine dangled a long stinger of a thing from its belly -- it could have been Paul Bunyan's hedge trimmer. Occasionally the whole apparatus would pause, hovering, maybe even yo-yoing a bit. Out of the din would come a shrieking, like a power saw ripping through lumber. Then a crackling. Then the machine moved on.
They call it "dressing the right of way."
A power line's greatest threat is a tree limb -- a limb that can be driven by snow or wind to snap a line and stop the flow of electricity. Someone has to prune those limbs back from power-carrying poles, lest every ice storm leave whole towns in the dark. For more than 20 years, Appalachian Power has done at least some of that trimming with a helicopter. And it's done that for one reason.
"Efficiency," said Appalachian Power Company spokesman Todd Burns.
In nine weeks, he said, one helicopter can accomplish as much as eight to 10 crews -- up to 40 people -- cutting and grubbing along the ground can do in a year. Put another way, it costs about $35 per tree to prune a power line's path with a ground crew. About $10 per tree with a helicopter.
If the weather is good, the cutting copters fly six days a week, covering as much as 15 miles in that time along the big power lines, as little as five miles when working next to the smaller lines that run through neighborhoods.
Not that most neighborhoods are likely to see such a thing.
"You obviously wouldn't want to be doing that in downtown Roanoke," Burns said.
It would likely cause a commotion if a McDonnell Douglas 500 helicopter buzzed Big Lick dangling a 90-foot-long boom and an 800-pound saw with 11 whirling blades.
The blades, each 2 feet across, are powered by a 25-horsepower gasoline engine.
"It's essentially a small tractor motor," said Ted McAllister, spokesman for Aerial Solutions, the North Carolina company that does all the aerial sawing for Appalachian Power.
The company has about a dozen pilots who do this sort of work. It takes a couple of years of training before they're turned loose on a job.
"Most of the pilots have really come to us seeking a challenge," McAllister said.
The challenge is to drag the huge saw beneath the helicopter and position it so it slices through what needs to be cut but avoids everything else.
"He's pretty much flying the saw," McAllister said of the airborne lumberjacks.
The apparatus can cut through 16 inches of tree and bark with ease, Burns said. For larger limbs, it may need to take a second bite.
Before they fly the saw, pilots fly along the route -- recon, McAllister called it -- to see what they'll have to deal with. But even with all that training and preparation, things go wrong. Sometimes the trimmed limbs fall on the lines the operation is meant to protect, cutting electrical service to at least a few customers.
"It happens frequently enough that we do send a crew along with the aerial saw," Burns said.
That's a line crew, ready to make repairs if the pruning goes awry.
That happened when the aerial saw was working in eastern Montgomery County about 10 days ago. A big sycamore branch crashed into a line while the helicopter was working on Boner's Run. The line crew was doing some maintenance just down the hill on Dark Run.
"He was a holler away when he was needed," Burns said of the repairman.
A day or two after trimming trees along the South Fork of the Roanoke River, the tri-color helicopter and its dangling giant trimmer were back at Aerial Solutions headquarters in Tubor City, about 20 miles north of North Myrtle Beach, S.C.
The company works year round, flying over the northern part of the country during warm months, heading south with the geese and the hawks when the weather begins to turn. But the flying stops for a few weeks every year for maintenance on all the rotors and the blades and the other moving parts that make airborne arboriculture possible.
They'll be back in the air early next month.
http://www.roanoke.com/images/nd/nrv122206a.jpg
Christina O'Connor | The Roanoke Times
An aerial saw from Aerial Solutions, hired by Appalachian Power to clear tree branches encroaching upon power lines, prepares to take off from a field behind Walnut Grove in Shawsville. The saw was cutting branches away from nearby power lines.
http://www.roanoke.com/images/nd/nrv122206b.jpg
http://www.roanoke.com/images/nd/nrv122206c.jpg