DayCor^® airborne inspection methods

Ofil offers a professional airborne UV inspection systems that incorporates the DayCor^® daytime corona detection technology in a dedicated gyro stabilized gimbaled payload. Designed to enable high speed remote detection of corona and arcing, provide high resolution images and straight forward reports.

Is airborne inspection feasible?

Airborne corona inspection was developed for safe and fast covering of long distances, and overcoming topographic barriers. The gyro stabilized airborne inspection system DayCor® Rom is already successfully used by airborne service companies and by utilities in Europe and in the USA.

D.Ruff, a Senior Structural Engineer, from the biggest transmission company in the west coast, USA (5 august 2003):

"…We have a very long (1500 miles) DC line that has one scheduled outage every year.  That outage is when all inspections and repairs are done on the line.  We use the DayCor in a helicopter to scan the line while it is still hot and see if any insulators are having corona.  Then, during the outage we inspect those insulators by having the crew take them down or go up in a bucket truck to take a closer look.  Without the DayCor we had to do the close up inspection randomly and pick some insulators to look at.  This is not as effective as having some insulators already identified.
So far, we have found the DayCor to be very useful.  The investigation with the interphase spacers helped us determine that the failed insulators were not a symptom of a system-wide problem.  We didn't have to panic and change out all the interphase spacer, which would have been very expensive.  I think this one investigation paid for the machine. 

…We are using the DayCor a lot these days and find it very useful both in the field and in the laboratory."

 

Airborne inspection tips

• Fly alongside the lines
• Speed can be high, relatively, but as soon as you see corona it is recommended to hover, in which case a strong enough helicopter is preferable.
• Verify from time to time that the camera is in the combined mode
• If you are using a flight mount table, make sure not to touch the
  body of the helicopter to avoide vibrations

Inspection options

• DayCor^® Rom
  

  DayCor^® Rom is an integrated systems in a gyro stabliezed gimbaled payload that offers smooth corona discharge inspection, high quality video clips of the inspected lines and an option to include other inspection technologies.
  

• DayCor^® Superb on a lap mount
  

  DayCor® Superb on a lap mount offers all the qualities of the Superb lap held during flight inspections. As such, the systems is not restricted to any particular helicopter and can be used for multi purposes. The helicopter door will need to be removed so that DayCor® will catch the UV emissions which do not cross glass.