PRELIMINARY SETTING DESIGN
Excerpt from FE Handbook:
Harvest Equipment -- Before starting your setting analysis, you need to know what type of yarder will be used. What size tower and carriage will you be doing your analysis with? Also, what will be the expected payload weight for this area? The results from previous reports can be a good guide. To get started, generic yarder and payload specifications can be used.
Setting Analysis -- One of the benefits of making a plan is that you can choose the best landing location for every area of timber. Use roads, streams, and other topographical features as your setting boundaries. The PLANS computer program will help you to find landing locations with the best profile deflection.
Potential landing sites are located based on breaks in terrain, as identified on the basemaps. Settings are grouped as ground units and cable units, based mainly on slope of the ground. Analysis of cable units is performed using PLANS and LoggerPC. In order to calculate payloads and deflections on analysis of skyline profiles, much input data is required.
Required information about yarders:
Required information about timber:
Required information about the ground:
The outputs of the PLANS analysis are landing location, cable road profiles, tailhold heights, and payloads.
Ideally, settings will be designed such that cable roads from different landings will overlap slightly, allowing full coverage of the landscape. Some landing locations will then be verified in the field.
The USFS Region 6 website has yarder and carriage data files for LoggerPC.
The 1998 Washougal Settings Project is an excellent reference.
The 1999 Hoodsport project and 2000 Burnt Mountain project are also good references. They are available from the FE450 web page.
See FE Handbook, Appendix G – PLANS for detailed information on how to use PLANS. The FE Handbook is available from the FE 450 web page.