Recently a famous video of two helicopters were drying the fields in the Alabama football stadium. Now you’re probably asking “Why did they call in the Helicopters” and “Isn’t it cheaper get fans?”
Let’s talk about this! Why use helicopters? As helicopters we are pushing our air from the top down we call this “Induce flow” as seen here.
So the helicopter acts as a huge fan. As it hovers over an area it slowly drys spots off!
Is it common to use helicopters as a dryer? Yes! There are beginning jobs for pilots to do this, Cherry drying is extremely common in the United States (Washington Base) where helicopters use their induce flow to dry cherries off. See here
The cost for the helicopters aren’t expensive! The MD is about 1,000 dollars an hour, while the Long Ranger is about 1,100 - 1,200$ an hour. So while this may seem expensive, it’s cheaper to get two helicopters to dry off a field vs pulling out fans and paying all those people to do it.
Recently learn of helicopters in my school too, amazing machines. What is a delicate and technically unstable machine turns out to provide the most freedom of control in the air, how engineers figure that out is truly amazing.
Especially with autopilots and stuff so advanced on a helicopter these days, I can’t help but admire how it can be so fundamentally complicated yet simple.
They’re absolutely fun to fly! I haven’t flown with an auto pilot on a helicopter yet but I hear it makes life so nice lol
Thank goodness for people like Sikorsky, Jacques and Louis Bregue, Paul Cornu!
