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Jämtlands Flyg is a well-known company filled with tradition and experience.
With its idyllic main base in the beautiful town Östersund, sitting on the shoreline of Lake
Storsjön, the company is mostly associated with agricultural works, wildlife conservation
and air taxi. However this is not all that comes to it. Sling load operations and pylon
mountings has rapidly become a large part of the company.
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Pylon and helicopter
Attaching service shed
The moulding operation
Attaching a mast section
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In fact Jämtlands Flyg is very experienced when it comes to sling load operations. But when the company purchased its Eurocopter AS 350 B2 in the autumn of 2001 things changed to the better. They were now able to take off with underslung loads weighing up to 1 160 kg instead of being limited to 700 kg as they were when using only the Colibri. This improvement gave rise to the consent of a number of new-fangled types of missions. Heavier loads often means more advanced sling load operations and one of the most advanced types of underslung manoeuvre you can accomplish is the pylon mounting. Jämtlands Flyg got a pylon mounting certificate quite recently and that has made them rather unique in the middle parts of Sweden.
Pylon mountings call for high concentration and often bestow poor vertical references at the same time as it requires high precision. The operation can easiest be described as putting a number of narrow blocks on top of each other helped by a rope attached to the top of each block. You need to stay perfectly still as the crewmen attach the new section helped by a number of bolts and nuts. Imagine doing that at an altitude of 100 meters! Even the smallest mistake can give fatal results for the people working in the mast. They’re indeed exposed and have nowhere to go but down.
This day Jämtlands Flyg had been appointed the task to install a 42 meter tall "Three" pylon for the Hutchison 3G mobile phone system at Ågesta Golf Course in Farsta, moments south of Stockholm. The weather was somewhat poor but Ulf Grinde, Jämtlands Flyg’s most experienced pilot as well as one of the founders of the company, managed to fulfil the two hours flight to Stockholm without any inconvenience.
A total of seven mast sections and one service shed as well as three loads with cables and other related material was intended to be airlifted to the construction site. The main concrete foundations, which was located on the top of a hill in the middle of the golf course, had been moulded by the help of Stockholms Helikoptertjänst’s MD 500E (SE-JGB) a couple of weeks earlier.
After preparing the loads together with some crewmen from BN Construction Ulf Grinde took off in his red Ecureuil and started to lift some construction material and then continued with the heavy service shed and finally the 900 kg lower section of the mast. As the crewmen worked with the finishing attachments of the section to the foundations Ulf Grinde took the opportunity to fuel up (the machine had intentionally been left with less fuel to be able to lift the heavy shed). After that the mounting of the six remaining mast sections was initiated. One hour and forty minutes later Ågesta’s own 42 meters mast had become a new addition to the local skyline.
Jämtlands Flyg’s Ecureuil returned up north after a night-stop at Stockholm city airport, "Bromma". Some of Ulf Grinde’s next items in the schedule for the rest of the week included a number of pylon mountings near the airport in Sundsvall and to find and lift a musk ox bull in Rogen Natural Park. This might sound too versatile to be true, but it’s the every-day life for the people at Jämtlands Flyg – different challenges each day.
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The photos are in a pretty poor quality due to the inferior rainy weather that specific day.
I hope for your indulgence and that you’ll overlook this fact.
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Lifting the lower part
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Attaching number two
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Taking shape
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Top section
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