BarryG

While not the wildest video ever never seen one of these in action
http://safeshare.tv/w/sOQkWdQUyp

rockcrawler304

Very cool Never even knew those existed!! Being THAT close to power lines has to keep the pucker factor very high

Bark

Two years ago our power company hired an H tree trimmer but lost a lot of money and time because the weather wouldn't cooperate.
I would not have wanted to be the guy sitting in this tree.

This was from the Oct 23rd Field and Stream:

Deer Hunter Leaps From Tree To Escape Helicopter Tree Trimmer.
Everyone knows deer like to browse in the clearings along power line right of ways. Did you ever stop to think about how the power companies keep those clearings clear? They use scary aerial trimmers that hang underneath helicopters and look like something out of an action movie, that's how.
Darren "Andy" Royalty of Seymour, Indiana learned this lesson first hand and will likely never forget.
Royalty was hunting on his own property when a helicopter tree trimmer working for Duke Energy made a pass right through the tree he was sitting in.
Royalty was able to jump to safety as the blades chewed up both his stand and his crossbow.

Wish they showed more of the mechanics behind making the blades turn.

bigfoot

this is a family site so I will only say that if this happened to me the saw would be well lubricated after cutting the tree I was in, but I would not want to be on the ground crew that maintained it

scuzman00

I came home one night about 10 years ago and found the helo and the cutting device parked on the pipeline right of way that is my driveway. Pilot was there and explained he wanted to leave it overnight and continue trimming the next morning. Like Bark, I wanted to know the logistics of how the cutter portion operated. It was a 25 foot long rectangular aluminum tube with 16-20" carbide circular saw blades on it. At the top was a 15 horsepower Honda engine. Down the center of the aluminum tube ran a super sized serpentine belt that drove each of the blades that routed back up to the Honda motor. The pilot could throttle the motor from the inside of the helo depending on how many blades were engaging in the cutting. I asked him what happened if things went awry with the cutter and he said he had a disconnect bolt on the bottom of the helo that he could engage and drop the entire apparatus if necessary. He said that in over 2000 hours of cutting, he had never had to release it. Pretty interesting set-up to watch in operation.

Gary

cougar

James Bond movie, The World is Not Enough.

Bark

I need to sit down and watch the newer Bond movies. Last one I saw was the second one that Tim Dalton was in. For some reason I didn't really like it much.



Ahhh. That's clever. I was thinking they had a flexible shaft or hydraulic lines going to a pto in the helicopter or something.