Pilot Jed Hughes and crew chief Jarrod Kolakowski explain how they cut trees from a helicopter. They work as a 50/50 team, brief before every job, stay 200 feet from houses, and skip early deer season to avoid spooking animals onto roads.
You know, my crew chief right here, this is my fuel transfer engineer. When they say groundman, I laugh at that or stuff. It's a fuel transfer engineer. It's my boy Blue right there. We're a team, though. I ain't kidding you. It's 50, 50 out here.
Title's crew chief.
Crew chief, fuel transfer engineer. Whatever he does, he's. He's the man. I just fly the helicopter. He, he is the operation. I'm just the guy flying the helicopter. I ain't kidding it. Other than that, Aerial Solutions Incorporated, we're the pioneers of the saw world. Been doing a lot longer than any other companies out there, I can tell you that much. And me been doing it longer than any other company's been out here. Very nice, very nice. I hope they see it.
From day one, Jed's talked about how, you know, it's 50, 50, that how you guys are a team and how we couldn't do it without you. And I'm amazed seeing everybody involved. I mean, this is people, you know, watching the first video that we did. But both of you guys, a couple years ago, people are saying all these things about, oh, that's so dangerous, and, oh, they just cut the trees down and leave it. And earlier today, Tim and I was talking about how they go around, they don't do it during deer season, right?
Correct. We take the first couple of days off just to give the hunters a chance to get out there, try and fill their tag.
I know that was one of the comments on. There was, oh, yeah, what about the poor guy up in his tree stand getting sawed in half by a helicopter?
Sorry, but if you, if you're out hunting deer, you have ears to hear them coming. You should probably hear this thing coming. And you shouldn't be hunting on the right of way as it is.
Right. Safety. I mean, all of you, everybody, you, Jed, Tim, everybody I've talked to, the word safety keeps coming up.
So, yeah, safety is the number one factor in what we do. Every morning we have a pre job briefing, talk about what we're gonna do in that day. We're gonna coordinate road closures, entrance and exits for pedestrians that are coming out of their driveways or side streets, roads, whatever. And then at the end of, we gather again and talk about what we did good that day and what we could do better tomorrow.
Well, last thing Tim was telling me that anytime Jed's near a house, they have one or two guys at that house so that in case somebody would come out, hey, you know, just letting them know that the helicopter can't get any closer than 200ft, but let them know that, hey, there's people on the ground making sure everything's okay, and so that nobody just does something dumb and come walking out of their house and get hit with flying tree limbs. Right.
And prior to the air saw coming in, the local forester usually sends out a notification by a phone blast or in the newspaper, radio, whatever, letting the people know that we're coming in, doing this work.
Right. Tell us what you do to support the whole tree sawing.
I run a lot of coordinating. My main job is to keep the saw in the air, working, pliable, fixing it. Drive the support truck around, fuel up, find places of land, talk to a lot of people. A lot of people. Meet a lot of cool people.
I've been amazed. You know, I was amazed the first time I saw you guys two years ago, and I'm still amazed now.
Okay, hook me up with that. Got your door. Got my door.
It's sam.
