UNITED STATES
TWENTY YEARS AGO
The Herr Hopper — by Professional Fibreglass by Bill Lavender
Left: Jon Herr with the “chopper” machine in the background that applies fiber and resin to hoppers. Jon is holding a repaired Piper Brave cowling. Middle: Jon Herr and Dave Barton stand by the huge Delta Turbines’ 800-gallon Dromader hopper top. Right: Another Herr hopper, actually a 400-gallon Ag-Viation hopper, ready for pick up.
B 26 | agairupdate.com
KNIGHTS LANDING, CA — Every ag pilot dreams of a bigger hopper, especially rice pilots. Larger is not always practical, the limitations can be many, not the least of the aircraft and its powerplant. However, the 300-gallon Ag-Cat is a prime candidate for a hopper expansion. This is where Jon Herr’s Professional Fiberglass comes into play. Jon Herr acquired his dad’s hangar in 1980. Mr. Charles Herr built and installed N3N and Stearman fiberglass hoppers during the early years of California ag aviation. Jon started with his dad when he was 14. He worked with another fiberglass repair company from 1972-1980. Upon a disagreement about the way things should be in this world, Jon formed Professional Fibreglass. Yes, he knows that Fibreglass is a unique way to spell fiberglass. But, since the English developed the fiberglass process and that’s the way they spell it, Jon figures one way is as correct as the other. Although there was a time Professional Fibreglass traveled throughout the United States repairing and rebuilding hoppers, today the company’s work is shipped to the plant at Knights Landing, a small community a few miles north of Woodland, California. To make it simple for the operator to send his hopper to Professional Fibreglass, Jon has an arrangement with several trucking companies that allows for a savings of 40-60% over normal shipping
charges. All a customer has to do is contact Jon and he’ll arrange for the pickup of the hopper. Professional Fibreglass’s speciality is the rebuild and expansion of 300-gallon Ag-Cat hoppers to a more practical 330-gallon hopper, known throughout the industry as the Herr hopper. Professional Fibreglass also manufactures the 400-gallon Ag-Cat hopper conversion for Ag-Viation and the hopper top for Delta Turbines’ 800-gallon hopper conversion for its turbine powered M18 Dromader. Other work by Professional Fibreglass includes reworking power company lift buckets, and fiberglass glare shields for the California Department of Forestry’s OV-10s. Another style of hopper Professional Fibreglass builds is not from fiberglass, but polypropylene. This construction requires thermoplastic welding. These speciality hoppers are built for installation in Bell and Hughes helicopters. Their unique rectangle design allows for a better positioning of the CG, by constructing the hopper behind the pilot’s seats and closer to the rotor mast. Sizes range from 400-500-gallons. For those operators of Ag-Cats with 400-gallon hoppers that have the aluminum throat of the hopper sand-casted to the fiberglass, Professional Fibreglass can rebuild these hoppers replacing the aluminum with the more practical fiberglass throat. When a hopper comes to the Professional Fibreglass shop it is cleaned of any residual
