The presentation began with a brief description of the history of Zanoni, which, since 2006, has equipped more than one hundred aircraft with this technology, having operations in all regions of Brazil and has already exported fire gates to countries in South America and Africa. As part of its 2021 technology development program for aerial firefighting, the company detailed new prototypes in tests, improvements in the hydraulic control, models for smaller aircraft, a spraying system for firebombers aircraft and a automation project for integration of the fire gates with DGPS system.
A prototype with a larger opening has been in testing since the 2020 fire season with a partner in the state of São Paulo, which has been highly praising for the novelty. This equipment offers faster hopper dumping than Zanoni's first generation of hydraulic gates (around 3 seconds for an AT502). This gate offers the same versatility as other Zanoni hydraulic gates, as it remains adaptable to the aircraft's spraying system, without the need to remove it for agricultural operation. The hydraulic command, on the other hand, has been improved to offer faster and more accurate opening and closing of the gate, with reduced aircraft energy consumption. Still under development, the new plant will be adaptable to all Zanoni gates already in operation.
The company also presented some projects in this line for smaller aircraft, such as the Embraer Ipanema. In addition to detailing a little more about the mechanical gates (which have a much larger opening than the common gate box and are already in operation by some Zanoni partners), Sérgio pointed out that now in April, the first hydraulic gate for smaller aircraft will be manufactured, which will have the same versatility as the fire gates for turbo aircraft. A spraying system adaptable to aircraft with longitudinal opening gates was also presented, to enable "firebomber aircraft" to also carry out agricultural spraying work. These last two projects meet the commitment of Zanoni Equipamentos to meet the needs of the Latin fleet, including our restrictions and particularities.
Finally, a project was also presented in partnership with the Canadian Agnav (with which Zanoni has been working in cooperation since 2009 in different projects) for the automation of the gates. The system will communicate with Agnav Gold and Platinum (in addition to working autonomously), it will have a programmable opening control, manual or automatic dumps (with the possibility of installment), fine adjustment of opening inside the cabin, registration of data for post-operation processing and a system with regulation and control for solid dispersion.
The company thanks everyone involved in this excellent and important event and, above all, its partners who are always helping to develop new technologies.
See more information about our gates here.
