The thought of a saw suspended from a helicopter may not sound like a real thing at first. In fact, it may bring to mind a scene from the 1999 James Bond movie “The World Is Not Enough,” where a rather ominous helicopter with circular saw blades is chasing the spy.
However, a North Carolina-based helicopter company called Aerial Solutions has patented an Aerial Power Saw attached to a helicopter, designed to trim rights-of-way for major power, pipeline and railroad companies throughout the country.
“The beauty of the aircraft is we can do in an hour what it would take a multi-person crew several days to do (on the ground),” said Ted McAllister, General Manager at Aerial Solutions. “We’re generally safer than having people on the ground or in trees with chainsaws, and we can cover a lot of territory a lot more quickly. There’s a benefit there in getting things done quickly and efficiently.”
Aerial Solutions demonstrated their Aerial Power Saw on the campus of The Ohio State University in Mansfield on Wednesday, using the aerial saw hung from a helicopter to trim trees along an Ohio Edison high-voltage transmission line right-of-way that runs through the campus.
According to Christopher Eck, Senior Communications Representative for FirstEnergy, the company that owns Ohio Edison, one side of the transmission lines will be cut using an aerial saw and the other side cut with conventional bucket trucks from the ground.
“Then we’re going to study it and see how the plants hold up and how quickly they grow back,” he said. “The test is to see what’s the most effective way to do this.”
Eck noted FirstEnergy would be working with Aerial Solutions all year throughout this area of Ohio trimming trees along power lines.
“Vegetation management is important because it reinforces system reliability for us, reduces the number of power outages when we have an ice or snow storm, and it brings down tree branches you don’t want bringing down the big transmission lines because those are the interstates to the power highway,” he said.
McAllister explained the aerial saw is a great benefit to utility companies in removing limbs that ground-based equipment can’t reach.
“We’re using circular saw blades that are suspended from the aircraft; they’re generally about 100 feet below the aircraft where they can trim the trees from the top of the canopy down to the ground,” he said. “One saw unit would typically trim 1,000 miles of power line in a year, compared to a ground-based operation, which completes a fraction of that.”
Aerial Solutions has been in business since 1985 and operates year-round in 24 different states using six different aircrafts. McAllister added pilots for Aerial Solutions typically have a thousand hours of aircraft time before being hired, and then embark on a two-year training program in a power line environment.
“It’s a systematic operation, but we still get looks like, ‘You’re going to do what? With what?’” said McAllister.
And while Aerial Solutions only uses its aerial saw for tree trimming, the company was approached to participate in the James Bond film.
“When we heard they were going to saw buildings and cars, we said, ‘That’s not the public image we want to project,’” said McAllister with a laugh.
