Santa Vitória Aviação Agrícola started like most operations do: with two friends who partnered up an ag pilot graduated in the Escola de Aviação Civil do Aeroclube do Rio Grande do Sul CAVAG in 1994 who founded Santa Vitória in 2005 with another partner a very experienced loader working for the company who then left to fly helicopters for a government agency De Cezere and Ingomar had already worked for other operators in the Santa Vitória do Palmar region a small town in the southernmost tip of Brazil surrounded by rice fields They also leased another plane in the first year for the other pilot a 1980 Ipanema 201A that's in the company fleet to this day In 2013 they acquired their third airplane they replaced the original Cessna Ag Truck with another Ipanema and opened two remote bases in the towns of Mostardas and São Lourenço do Sul Their workforce of two employees to help the partners in the first year grew up to 16 today experience and dedication by both partners the fact that De Cezere is not only an ag pilot but also holds a degree in financial management and a postgraduate degree in production engineering brought this knowledge to the company management a strategic map with a vision – to be recognized as the aerial application operation with the best results – and a mission – to help farmers produce high-quality grains with high performance and safety The strategic map also lists several ways to reach these missions and visions which include taking the time and resources to train the workforce and watch for new technologies The ability to delegate is also important for the savvy manager; despite being a very experienced ag pilot De Cezere made Carlos Eduardo Romano the Chief Pilot and Toni Sato the company's Safety Officer De Cezere says that Santa Vitória Aviação Agrícola focuses primarily on the quality of their applications working closely with their customers and their agronomists Santa Vitória Aviação Agrícola's fleet is standardized with the Ipanema with five EMB-202 burning ethanol and one EMB-201A that still uses avgas De Cezere says the 202 is the perfect fit for most of his customers' fields Santa Vitória do Palmar is well-known for its strong and near-constant winds it is necessary to make aerial applications in less-than-ideal wind conditions it is the ability of the pilot to take off and land in those conditions that dictate the continuity of the operation and De Cezere says what most Ipanema pilots know – that the Ipanema is easier to handle in a crosswind than a Cessna Santa Vitória's Ipanemas are equipped with STOL fan jet nozzles and Dry applications are made with STOL spreaders Four of the Ipanemas have Satloc Bantam GPS units Santa Vitória's season starts between August and September with glyphosate applications on fields about to be seeded with rice A second glyphosate application is done when the rice is about to sprout sometimes with some other herbicide in case resistant weeds are present a third herbicide application is done if those glyphosate-tolerant weeds are still in the field one or two urea applications are made at between 60 to 80 kg/ha (53 to 71 pounds/acre) Many farmers do the first urea application by ground rigs Santa Vitória Aviação Agrícola will usually be asked by the farmers to make an application of fungicide on the rice incorporating fungicides and insecticides as necessary All liquid applications are done at 20 lts/ha (2 GPA) Santa Vitória applications are 60% made on rice and 30% on soybeans The 10% left are cover crops that are seeded until June when the company's season effectively ends rice was the only crop grown in Santa Vitória do Palmar and virtually all applications were made by airplanes soybean farmers moved into the area and brought self-propelled ground rigs with them They found they could use those rigs on rice too and now they became competitors for the local ag operators Santa Vitória Aviação Agrícola operates in about 20 satellite strips distant up to 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the base plus a remote base in the city of Mostardas where one pilot and a loader operate the single EMB-201A in the fleet Most new operations operate smoothly when they're small; with one or two ag planes the skills necessary to run them are just those a pilot has that administrative pains show up and drag down those whose owners lack the necessary knowledge to deal with them That is the reason SINDAG has been promoting so many administration courses and AgAir Update has brought "Papo de Gestão" as a monthly column brought by a trained administrator who knows how to set priorities The synchronous compensator is an equipment unit that regulates voltage and power within a substation. This means that it may absorb or provide reactive power to the system, depending on current demand. This way, for example, during nighttime, when power demands are low, the compensator absorbs power from the National Interconnected Power System, whereas during peak hours the compensator works in order to provide more reactive power, supplying system needs and regulating voltage levels. The synchronous compensator is a large-scale equipment that requires time until it is ready for operation. The installation at the Marmeleiro 2 substation started on December 2019, and January 2020 at Livramento 3. Works are expected to take until September 2021, comprising over 40 people in each of the substations. Each equipment unit weighs around 262 tons, with 4.1 m (length), 5.6 m (width) and 4.6 m (height). The foundation has around 3 m depth for proper ground fixation. “The installation of the compensator involves civil, electric, electro-mechanic projects, foundation preparation, manufacturing of all other auxiliary equipment, such as transformers, switches and breakers, in addition to the control and command room and all cabling required for this huge entrepreneurship", says Helber Oliveira, electric engineer at Neoenergia. IACIT builds radar capable of monitoring ocean regions and detecting vessels at sea beyond the field-of-view limit IACIT IACIT radar tower installed at a Navy base in the city of Santa Vitória do Palmar on the coast of Rio Grande do Sul StateIACIT Capable of detecting and identifying targets located great distances offshore the radars known as OTH (over the horizon) are produced by few countries The first Brazilian prototype of this type of radar was assembled this year at the Albardão Lighthouse a Brazilian Navy facility located on the coast of the state of Rio Grande do Sul where it is undergoing adjustments and field tests a local company responsible for developing the radar expects to complete the testing phase by June 2017 Development of the OTH radar is receiving logistical support from the Navy and received an investment of R$4.5 million from the Brazilian Innovation Agency (FINEP) at the beginning of radar development The company began to design the equipment in 2013 with the objective of giving Brazil more autonomy in control and surveillance of borders and of the sea and low-altitude air space “Our radar can monitor vessels up to 200 nautical miles from the coast [around 370 kilometers (km)] exceeding the direct line of sight of conventional radars,” explains Luiz Carlos Teixeira Traditional radars emit electromagnetic waves that move along a linear trajectory and can only detect objects within their field of view “This radar was designed principally for the Blue Amazon Management System (SisGAAz) because the company saw a good opportunity to develop the equipment that will help preserve the riches of the oceans under Brazil’s jurisdiction.” SisGAAz is a national defense project established by the Brazilian government to monitor and manage a coastal area measuring 4.5 million km2 OTH radars can be divided into two categories depending on the way their electromagnetic waves propagate: skywaves and surface waves The majority in operation in the world belong to the category of skywaves which emit high-power waves towards the sky The signal is reflected by the ionosphere — the plasma layer of the atmosphere encompassing altitudes from 60 km to 1,000 km — and back to Earth focusing on a particular region of the ocean the radar can “see” targets hundreds or thousands of miles away The problem is that this type of equipment does not operate well in the equatorial region of our planet where the ionosphere is unstable and turbulent Earth’s equatorial zone is a little to the south of the Equator precisely in the subtropical region in South and Southeast Brazil LÉO RAMOS Tests of aviation control equipment at airports…LÉO RAMOS Léo Ramos … and screen with blocker performance dataLéo Ramos IACIT’s portfolio includes an oceanic radar that permits real-time observation of large areas of the sea The equipment is designed to obtain measurements of ocean surface currents through high-frequency signals and can be used for various civil scientific and national security applications Its range is about 150 km from the coast (along the Earth’s surface) “Oceanic radars are an important technology for a country like Brazil which has a long coast,” says Professor Paulo Henrique Rezende Calil coordinator of the Ocean Dynamics and Modeling Laboratory of the Oceanography Institute of the Federal University of Rio Grande (FURG) The researcher explains that these devices provide information about sea conditions “They are useful for exploring Brazil’s exclusive economic zone and for offshore rescue operations,” he explains The exclusive economic zone is the section of the ocean extending up to 370 km from the coast over which countries have priority in terms of exploiting natural resources The company is negotiating the sale of the first radar of this type to the Brazilian government The world market for equipment of this kind is dominated by two manufacturers is transferring radar signal processing technology to it Drone blocker Another newly developed product was an electronic countermeasure system for blocking drones the DroneBlocker model is equipped with cameras and acoustic and frequency sensors capable of detecting unmanned flying objects up to 1,500 meters away the blocker interferes with communications between the drone and its controller causing the device to land or return to the point of origin regardless of who is controlling the device The company signed a contract with the Brazilian Army to supply eight DroneBlockers and received inquiries from interested parties from more than 20 countries “The device was used during the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro to protect sports facilities.” It costs about R$450,000 and is part of a broader set of cell-phone- radio- and other radio-frequency-signal-blocking devices © Revista Pesquisa FAPESP - All rights reserved.