RICARDO CHEES
 lvl.4
Peru
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In my short experience (my first demonstration flight was on avocado and mandarin trees 2-3 meters high), fumigating fruit trees with the Agras requires a lot of skill and dexterity. Particularly I prefer for now (and till acquiring greater ability) to avoid doing it. Here the reasons:
1) The drone is lost of sight, with the additional danger that not all trees have a uniform height and there is always a branch that protrudes. If you are going to fly, I recommend you position yourself in a high position of advantage to fly VFR visual or have an observer with a radio at hand. I know of a company in Colombia that has adapted an observation platform to the back of the truck to operate and follow from there the Agras in grown fields of sugarcane.
2) The irregularity in the flight due to the altimeter radar as it follows the contour of the terrain during the swath changes and even flying the longitudinal ones, in the spaces between tree and tree it loses height and it recovers it abruptly and constantly. If you program a flight height of 3 meters., these are 3 meters over the top of the trees, that is to say, you will be at 5.5 meters high from the ground if the trees have a height of 2.5 meters. It means that the Agras radar will take as reference to maintain the 3 meters of constant separation first the top, then the soil, the top, the soil and so on. The same when you change street, the drone will tend to descend. This situation in addition to being quite stressful for the pilot because you do not know if the Agras will recover the height in time to face a tree, makes it impossible to fly more than 2 m / s. Now if the tree planting is leafy and the cups overlap, I think there would be no problems with the radar-altimeter and the irregular flight.
3) Product waste. Generally, fruit trees crops have spaces between trees of 3 to 4 meters. longitudinally and the streets have separations of 3 to 4 meters. as well. Since the Agras only stops spraying when it changes street, the longitudinal spaces between trees are still pulverized and this product is lost.
I have consulted with Colombian friends who operate Agras and they strongly recommend me not to work with fruit trees. They tell me it's dangerous and inefficient because you have to fly and apply manually. I have some success stories that I got from DJI and one of them mentions a pollination operation in a pears crop with 7 m trees. Tall. The flight parameters of this test in F Mode are: flight height: 9 meters. / speed: 2.5 m / sg / strip width: 5 mts / 4 nozzles -Intensive / 9.7 lts / acre - 24 lts / Ha.
Another case is pepper trees 3 to 7 meters high, which were sprayed manually and at a very low speed 2 m / sg due to the above-mentioned difficulties.
"... the DJI Agras MG-1S was flown manually so that the pilot could gain full control of the drone The canopy was so dense that the trees were sprayed one by one to ensure an even application. water volume increased to 4 L, reducing pesticide concentration while providing better coverage. "
"... Flight route plans had to be based on the conditions of where the MG-1S would fly. Over gentle slopes, the operator has a complete aerial view, avoiding risks and obstacles. prompting them to pay particular attention to aircraft altitude. "
Another issue to consider is that when there are streets of 3 to 4 meters. wide, there is the difficulty of aligning the flight route with the crop lines. Usually, it is about keeping the vertical of the "belly" of the tank with the axis of the street, and the sprinklers over the crop. This requires several tests to be aligned or have the RTK system that gives you a precision of centimeters. (The Agras as such gives you an accuracy of 1.5 to 2 meters’ error).
Keep me posted.
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