What’s that giant orange insect? A whirlybird at work
Air-Crane creates buzz hovering over Delavan
Monique Tyes was driving her nephew to school Tuesday morning when she noticed the enormous orange helicopter outside the former American Axle & Manufacturing plant on East Delavan Avenue.
“I had to go back home and get my camera,” Tyes said. She stood on Cornwall Avenue, a street bordering the vast complex, snapping digital shots as the Erickson Air-Crane floated overhead.
The helicopter, nicknamed Goliath, created something of a neighborhood spectacle. Some passing drivers slowed or even pulled over and parked to watch the aircraft.
The job was a joint effort between Hohl Industrial Services, a Town of Tonawanda company, and Oregon-based Erickson. Hohl hired the helicopter to help carry out a heavy-duty task: move 11 pieces of power- related equipment, including five transformers, from the roof to a back lot.
The Goliath, which looks more like a giant insect than a traditional helicopter, can carry loads of up to 20,000 pounds. The heaviest transformers it picked up Tuesday weighed about 18,000 pounds.
Once on the ground, the equipment was loaded by crane onto trucks for shipment to Detroit for reuse by the company, said Afif Bitar, American Axle’s director of corporate facilities and power distribution, who observed the lifts.
For such a heavy-duty project, the work was completed swiftly. Once the helicopter was airborne, it took only about an hour, including some time on the ground for refueling.
The helicopter hovered over the plant, with four cables dangling from its underside. After workers on the roof connected the cables to a load, the helicopter flew it a short distance to the back lot and deposited it. Then the aircraft flew backward to repeat the process.
Hohl has handled other work for American Axle, including moving some presses from its Town of Tonawanda forge to its machining plant in Cheektowaga.
William Weber, project manager for Hohl, said that it cost about $100,000 to bring the helicopter to Buffalo, though this was not its only assignment away from its home base out west. After the American Axle job, the helicopter was headed to Kentucky, he said.
Weber said initial plans called for the American Axle job to be completed over the summer. But because the Air-Crane is also used to fight forest fires, it was not available then.
The former axle factory is headed for a new use. In October, the complex was bought for $1.5 million by Ontario Specialty Contracting Ltd., which intends to demolish part of it and place commercial tenants into what will remain.
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