Oil pipeline air inspection

alfadog said:
ATTENTION PILOTS:​

UNFORTUNATELY WE ARE NOT HIRING AT THIS TIME.

WE APPLOGIZE BUT WE ARE NOT ACCEPTING ANY PHONE CALLS, EMAILS, OR RESUMES FOR ANY REASON CONCERNING EMPLOYMENT.

FOR GENERAL INFORMATION OUR MINMUM PILOT FLIGHT TIME REQUIREMENTS ARE THE SAME AS FOR FAR PART 135 OPERATIONS, 2000 HOURS PIC. ALL PILOTS MUST HOLD AN ATP, A&P, AND MUST HAVE SIMILAR LOW LEVEL / MOUNTAINOUS TERRAIN / REMOTE OPERATIONS TYPE FLYING EXPERIENCE. NO EXCEPTIONS TO THESE ABSOLUTE MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS ARE CONSIDERED.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR INTEREST AND PLEASE RESPECT OUR TIME.

http://www.pipelinepatrol.com/contact-us/
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Ha Ha...

And get paid 10 bucks an hour, or whatever they claim is good pipeline patrol pay...:rofl::rofl::lol::lol:....:rolleyes:
 
Some places pay 40 K per year and you may only be flying twice a week... Sometimes four times if there is activity. Not bad if you are an entrepreneur or can do something on the side.
 
RyanShort1 said:
Some places pay 40 K per year and you may only be flying twice a week... Sometimes four times if there is activity. Not bad if you are an entrepreneur or can do something on the side.
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Good luck landing that gig....:rolleyes:
 
There's been an advertised gig in Snyder Tx for several months. I don't think it requires ATP
 
There are 5-6 bases in Texas that I'm aware of and I think at least four companies.
 
N801BH said:
Hey buddy....
I believe ya....


I just can't figure out why they require a ATP to fly pipelines...:dunno::dunno::confused::confused:
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Because they don't want anybody bothering them looking for work.
 
alfadog said:
ATTENTION PILOTS:​



UNFORTUNATELY WE ARE NOT HIRING AT THIS TIME.



WE APPLOGIZE BUT WE ARE NOT ACCEPTING ANY PHONE CALLS, EMAILS, OR RESUMES FOR ANY REASON CONCERNING EMPLOYMENT.



FOR GENERAL INFORMATION OUR MINMUM PILOT FLIGHT TIME REQUIREMENTS ARE THE SAME AS FOR FAR PART 135 OPERATIONS, 2000 HOURS PIC. ALL PILOTS MUST HOLD AN ATP, A&P, AND MUST HAVE SIMILAR LOW LEVEL / MOUNTAINOUS TERRAIN / REMOTE OPERATIONS TYPE FLYING EXPERIENCE. NO EXCEPTIONS TO THESE ABSOLUTE MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS ARE CONSIDERED.



THANK YOU FOR YOUR INTEREST AND PLEASE RESPECT OUR TIME.



http://www.pipelinepatrol.com/contact-us/
Click to expand...


So much for the "pilot shortage"! ;)
 
The above descriptions are mostly correct. My brother had 300 hours TT and started in OK and ended up with BP with about 34000 hours. Flew with him a few times and what most consider severe turb they just yawned. Each airplane, 182 and 182 RG's would go through 3-4 engines before being retired with 12-15 thousand hours on the frame.
 
NoHeat said:
Capital cost: Drone is maybe 1/10 cost to buy.

Consumables: Fuel will be less for the drone as it need not carry a 200# pilot. Maybe a lot less.

Insurance: Way cheaper for the drone out in the countryside -- if it crashes nobody dies.

Pilot & MX cost: Aside from the insurance component I don't know, maybe you are right that they are similar.

Wouldn't the drone be better as it could fly <500' ?
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This job is ideally suited for drones, but the current off-the-shelf drones are only good for ~20 mins of flight time, even a custom built high $$ one can only manage ~45 mins. No doubt there's a double buttload of engineers out there trying to figure out how to get more flight time. The drone industry and it's commercial application are going to be big bucks real soon...
 
NoHeat said:
Capital cost: Drone is maybe 1/10 cost to buy.
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A drone that can fly a 300mile section of pipeline ?

You are thinking of drone-toys. Something that can replace a GA aircraft in range and speed is going to cost millions.
 
Not millions. Textron (well AAI actually) built the Aerosonde/Shadow that can have that range (depending on what the payload is) and is CHEAP for defense products. In fact, it costs less than most missiles do (less than $100K if I recall).
 
flyingron said:
Not millions. Textron (well AAI actually) built the Aerosonde/Shadow that can have that range (depending on what the payload is) and is CHEAP for defense products. In fact, it costs less than most missiles do (less than $100K if I recall).
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For the Aerosonde, the manufacturer gives 75 nautical miles for range (based on communications, not endurance of the craft itself).

For the Shadow:

http://www.bga-aeroweb.com/Defense/RQ-7-Shadow.html


Price/Cost:
A full RQ-7 system with 4 UAVs, launcher, ground control station, and associated spares and other equipment has a price tag of about $15.5 million (in 2011). The unit cost (just the aerial vehicle) is $750,000 (in 2011).


I know, that's federal government 'silly money', but maybe two guys in a 182 aren't that costly after all.

One of those short-range drones may be a good option to map a series of collection fields and use a differences software to look for encroachments discoloration etc. Drone goes up every morning, streams data and returns in the evening.

Unless you have someone who looks at the feed real time, what you lose with the drone is the ability to loop back, look at an anomaly and call in crews on the ground.
 
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For a little more variety try fish spotting. These guys go out and fly the ocean at 200 feet looking for schools of fish to direct the fishing boats. Each fleet of boats has their own plane and they are all looking at the ocean for the same fish. It's a wonder they don't run into each other more often.
 
I suspect the sensors make up a good part of the $750,000 price tag. The Shadow roots were in a weather product called the Aerosonde. They used to fly them into hurricanes and they were cheap enough that if they were collecting good data they'd agree to sacrifice it by leaving it flying there beyond the point of recovery.
 
flyingron said:
I suspect the sensors make up a good part of the $750,000 price tag. The Shadow roots were in a weather product called the Aerosonde. They used to fly them into hurricanes and they were cheap enough that if they were collecting good data they'd agree to sacrifice it by leaving it flying there beyond the point of recovery.
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Sure, but how are you going to collect data if you don't have a sensor suite and satlink? A Wescam ball alone is 300k and up and that is before you have recording and uplink capability. Sure, you can stick a gopro to the drones belly and make a video strip, but that won't help you much to determine whether a piece of construction equipment is actively digging or whether a puddle is just water or an oil sheen. I am sure this can be done, but for the time being UAS operation is very personnel and capital intensive. Nobody is shooting at the pipeline inspection helos and fixed wing aircraft and there are enough airports around that 9hr endurance is of little benefit for the mission. It'll be a while until they replace a plane with a pilot/observer.
 
Yeah, I found my trashcan using Google. But when I went to get it, it wasn't there...
 
Haven't done patrols, but would like to. If anyone knows a helicopter operator doing it that needs help, let me know!
 
Not clear that you need either a steerable camera or a sat link to do pipeline patrol.

The big issue is that you need someone to actually look at the strip of collected imagery and that person probably isn't going to be much cheaper if he's looking at the recovered imagery or is actually sitting in the plane while it is being collected.

Now the big thing would be to have software that does automatic change detection for the type of stuff they're looking for on the patrols. This is the sort of thing I was doing for the intelligence community back in my career. It can be challenging. The human brain is a much better device for filtering out "something's different here" in most cases (in fact I was involved in a research project that did a "man-in-loop" thing where we hooked EEG wires to an analyst and showed him imagery at a much higher rate than he might normally had viewed them).
 
dans2992 said:
So, why couldn't this be done with up to date Google Earth images (assuming they were updated every few weeks - which is probably coming soon)?
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The high res stuff you see on Google Maps is done by aerial photography. You'd probably need that level of detail for pipeline inspections.
 
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