Magnetic + Mechanical + Sensor Based Sorting & Cleaning Solutions
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The Seeker Airdrag FOD Friction Sweeper is an Accessory for the Seeker Airmag Magnetic Sweeper. This additional piece of equipment extends the cleaning capability of the Seeker Airmag and completes the Seeker FOD Management system. Capable of effective sweeping at speeds up to 25mph the Seeker FOD Management system is a comprehensive solution for cleaning all aspects of an airfield. The Seeker Airdrag was developed with input from multiple international airports from across North America to ensure that this sweeper exceeded their expectations and excels where competitor debris mat sweepers fall flat.
The Seeker Airdrag FOD Friction Sweeper takes the concept of a basic friction sweeper, and increases the longevity, efficiency, and user experience of the sweeper. The Seeker Airdrag is modular, and all wear parts are replaceable, meaning all pieces can be replaced when worn or entire pods can be swapped out if damaged. Unlike other friction mats that have a set number of miles they can cover, the Seeker Airdrag Airport FOD Sweeper is a cleaning solution that can be repaired and maintained indefinitely.
Unlike other friction sweepers available, the Seeker Airdrag was designed to work with the Airmag system, making up the Seeker FOD Control System. By placing the Seeker Airmag ahead of the Seeker Airdrag friction FOD sweeper, you can extend your sweeping range, as all metallic / ferrous debris you encounter while sweeping will be collected by the magnet, saving space in the Airdrag’s debris pods for non-metallic / ferrous FOD.
Price range: $19,999.99 through $34,999.99
See Pricing For All Models Below
$19,999.99 USD
$19,999.99 USD
$19,999.99 USD
$34,999.99 USD
$34,999.99 USD
$34,999.99 USD
| Seeker Airdrag Series | Seeker Airdrag 60 | Seeker Airdrag 180 |
|---|---|---|
| SKU | SAD60 | SAD180 |
| Sweeper Weight | 525lbs | 900lbs |
| Shipping Weight | 650lbs | 1100lbs |
| Sweeping Width | 79 inches | 204 inches |
| Total Product Width | 88 inches | 210 inches |
| Sweeping Height Adjustment | NA | NA |
| Trailer Wheel Type | 16.5″ x 6.5″ air filled, hub and spindle, 5 bolt spindles rated at 1000 lbs each | 16.5″ x 6.5″ air filled, hub and spindle, 5 bolt spindles rated at 1000 lbs each |
| Pod Wheel Type | Urethane wheels with aluminum hubs and ball bearings | Urethane wheels with aluminum hubs and ball bearings |
| Clean Out Method | Manual or vacuum | Manual or vacuum |
| Tongue weight | 70lbs | 70lbs |
| Lights | Standard, included | Standard, included |
| Hitch type | 2.5” pintle ring | 2.5” pintle ring |
| On Board Debris Containment | 2x 5-gallon pails | 2x 5-gallon pails |
| Terrain Surface | Hard surfaces i.e. Asphalt, Concrete | Hard surfaces i.e. Asphalt, Concrete |
| Pricing Range | $19,999.99 USD | $34,999.99 USD |
Seeker Airdrag 60 (in sweeping configuration) Dimensions Side View
Seeker Airdrag 60 (in stowed configuration) Dimensions Top View
Seeker Airdrag 180 (in narrow configuration) Dimensions Top View
A: Stowable wings
B: 16.5” x 6.5” air filled wheels
C: 2.5” x 2.5” x 1/8” (0.125”) thick steel frame tubes
D: 2.5” x 2.5” x 3/16” (0.1875”) thick steel tongue tube
E: 2.5” 5 ton forged steel pintle ring
F: Debris collection trough
G: 2pcs 5 gallon buckets for debris storage
H: Pod storage rack
I: 4’ safety flags on wings and main trailer
J: 2” x 2” x 1/8” (0.125”) thick steel wing tubes
A: Replaceable magnetically sealed debris cover
B: Replaceable extruded aluminum debris ramps with replaceable polyurethane debris ramp tips
C: 12 gauge (0.104”) steel side plates
D: Replaceable ½” steel latch rod
E: Replaceable 4.75” (120mm) urethane wheels with aluminum core and 6082RS ABEC9 bearings 132lb (60kg) load capacity
F: Easy access for debris ramp tip replacement
G: Cotter pins and nyloc nuts prevent loss of fasteners
H: Replaceable steel latch
I: Replaceable extruded aluminum hinged broom with replaceable brushes
J: Replaceable 3/16” thick steel hooks
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A: Links to Seeker Airmag with same towing width
B: Complete overlapping coverage over 209 inch sweeping width
C: Uses same 16.5” x 16.5” tires as Seeker Airmag
The Seeker Airdrag Passive Airport FOD Sweeper consists of 13 small pods that provide 17-feet of sweeping coverage, built to perfectly line up with the towing profile of the Seeker Airmag that it follows. The multi-pod sweeping setup’s flexibility provides superior ground tracking ability which conforms to the shape of the surface its being towed on; allowing for better coverage when sweeping over heavily crowned runways.
Each pod in the multi-pod sweeping setup is fixed in place horizontally which maintains better coverage through turns when compared to debris mat style sweepers that can swing out of position. Each pod can hold up to 116 cubic inches of debris, for a total of 1508 cubic inches of debris or about 80lbs of pea gravel. Utilizing a magnetic and friction / passive sweeper to clean areas around an airfield, results in a cleaner area since the magnet clears any metal debris that may be present , leaving more room for debris in the friction sweeper. Since the Seeker FOD Management System allows operators to run both sweeper types at the same time, FOD cleaning becomes more efficient and faster as the system is effective at speeds of up to 25 mph. The Seeker Airdrag FOD Sweeper is available in the same colours as the Seeker Airmag: army green, sand, and traffic orange.
This is the Seeker Air Drag FOD Sweeper. It is the second part of the Seeker FOD Management System that starts with the magnet, and now we have the drag. So essentially what this thing is, is an accessory to pick up any kind of debris that might be out on a flat surface. Could be an airport, parking lot, whatever, racetrack—any flat kind of concrete area that you want to make sure is clean. You want to get all the little pebbles, cigarette butts, zip ties, aluminum fasteners, stainless steel—anything that can’t get picked up by the magnet, we now have a drag that’ll pick everything up.
So essentially how it works is, there’s a little brush on the front and a little ramp. The brush kind of kicks things up, and then it gets caught in the ramp as the truck moves forward. I’ll detach one and show you it shortly. But this thing can be purchased as a single 5T—well, not 5T—a 79-inch sweeping width unit. So that would be just the central part of the trailer here with no wings on it. So it would just be this central part and then the five sweepers in the middle—so these three and that one, those two. So that would be five sweepers for a 79-inch sweeping width.
This is the triple setup because we have it hooked to the triple magnet setup, so the magnets are 15 feet wide. This is 24 inches of sweeping, so it works out together. It’s a little wider than the magnetic sweeping part, which is good, because, you know, more is better. But it’s not any wider—it’s in line with the wheels of the magnet trailer—so it sweeps a little more just because the wheels are inboard. That’s how that works. Each one of these little pods can hold 150 cubic inches of stuff—that could be 10 lbs of gravel, a bunch of cigarette butts, whatever.
So you’ve got 13 sweepers on the triple setup, and that’ll give you 1,950 cubic inches of debris you can collect before they’re completely full. To clean it out—I was just doing a video here on how to clean it out—all you have to do is either pick them up and shake them out, or you can get a vacuum, pop the little latch—there’s a fabric, magnetized cover that keeps all the debris from bouncing out while you’re driving. That just flips up, you get a vacuum cleaner going there, clean it all out—really easy.
The parts on this thing are all replaceable. Our competitors don’t sell replacement parts for their sweepers, which means when it wears out, you need to buy a brand-new one. With the Blue Streak system, it’s way more modular, so these things can be popped in and out. You could have spare ones, you can just replace a couple if a couple fins are broken or if one wheel is worn out more than the other, because the outer ones might wear out faster than the inner ones. Whatever is broken or worn out, just replace them and it’s easy. You just keep it running forever, rather than just having the wasteful task of throwing it out and getting a new one. You just keep making this one work, which is more sustainable and probably cheaper in the long run and less of a pain because you don’t have to order a whole new system every time—just get some replacement parts.
So this unit altogether weighs 900 lbs—895 to be exact. If you order the single system, it’s 495 lbs, and then the triple system is basically 900 lbs. The outer tires—here, in the other video I showed you how to flip it down—so the outer wings will flip in to make it easier for storage, and then all of your pods get stored on this little rack here. These metal rods interface with the front of the sweepers, and then they just hook on, you just stack them up, and you can fit all 13 right here. It’s easy to transfer because then these wings will come up and it’s only like 8–10 feet wide, so that’s pretty convenient.
The tongue weight is about 75 lbs or 45 lbs, one or the other. Everything’s powder coated and painted; it’s very well-constructed. It’s a heavy-duty unit. We just ran it around the apron going about 30 mph—recommended top speed is 25, but we were hitting 30 because we had to move, since the plane was coming. It tows really well, it’s nice and stable. We recommend sweeping between 10 and 25 mph. Fifteen seems like a nice spot to do it, that way you’re not flying everything around, you’re not hitting things too hard. Fifteen seems like a nice spot.
Yeah, it seems to work pretty well. Today we’ve been picking up lots of rocks. It’s supposed to pick up anything that’s up to about an inch in size—like a golf ball, basically—but we picked up a big chunk of concrete that was about 2 inches, so it’ll pick up some pretty big stuff. It’s not really designed to do that, but it will. You’ll see they’re all set up overlapping, so they’re one next to each other, so you have a full 204-inch sweeping width with no gaps that stuff can get in between. When you’re done with it, you just stack them all up on the center portion of the trailer, fold your wings up and you’re good to go again.
So this thing can be used as a standalone trailer. If you don’t have the magnet, you can just order this and it will work on its own. It uses a pintle ring hitch; you hook it to your truck. You can tow it behind pretty much anything—it’s not that heavy, it’s only 900 lbs—so you can tow it behind a UTV if you want, or a quad. You can order as a single or triple; you don’t need the magnet to go with it, but it also works with the magnet. So it’s like a double combo: all the metal gets picked up first by the magnet, so you’re not wasting space in the debris bins, and then anything that doesn’t get caught by the magnet gets caught in the debris bins, and you get a nice clean runway.
We’re here at Tulsa, Oklahoma airport and it’s hot, there are F-16s flying around, and it looks like Taylor Swift’s taking off every 20 minutes because private jets are going everywhere. Yeah, I think we’re going to go put these things away soon. And that’s the Seeker Air Drag. Oh, it’s got 16 and 1/12 inch wheels—same as the ones on the Seeker Air Mag—air-filled 16/12 inch wheels, 1,000 lb hubs, 5-bolt pattern. They’re pretty good wheels, 1,000 lb bearings on each one, and the thing only weighs 900 lbs—well, 895—but yeah, so its bearings are good, wheels are good, it’s a nice setup, tows well.
It comes in the same colors as the magnet does, so you can get it white, green, or orange. Everyone seems to like the orange, so we got an orange one here. It’s got the safety flags for when you’re backing it up. I wouldn’t want to back these two up together because, you know, double pivot action—I’m not that good of a driver—but you could, and the flags make it easier so you can see it in your mirror. It’s not just on the ground—you can see it in the mirror a little easier.
It does come with lights as standard, with a standard four-pin connection. These guys didn’t want the lights because they have lights on their truck, so there are no lights on this one, but it does come with lights you can wire up to your truck, and then you just have standard brake and tail lights, turn signals, that sort of thing. So yeah, all the parts are available online—we’ll ship them to you. Nothing’s magnetic in this thing, so it ships out very quickly. It’s cheaper to ship parts too, because it’s not magnetic, it’s not heavy. Any of the parts you can replace—you get the brushes, you get the wheels, you can get the little fins. Those are all standard wear parts, so they will wear out. You order them from us, and we just keep sending you them and they keep working forever. It’s a lot easier than the guys where you have to buy a whole new FOD system every time something wears out on it.
That’s our new Seeker Air Drag. We’ve been running around for a couple hours, these guys have never used it before. Yeah, there you go—should be available whenever you see this video.
“Wow, we are shocked how much debris the Airdrag collected, we will never use our drag mats again”
Graham Smith
Airfield Maintenance Manager, Apron Maintenance Manager Toronto Pearson Airport.
Working with airports across North America during the development process of the Seeker Airdrag FOD Friction Sweeper gave insight into issues with existing friction mat FOD sweepers and allowed for improvements in every area. So, after hearing the faults and problems with other Airport FOD Friction Sweepers from people who have used them for years in different conditions and climates. The Seeker Airdrag is built to improve on notable problems, offering greater ergonomics, longevity and efficiency than competing FOD Sweepers. The Seeker Airdrag Airport FOD sweeper is easier to clean out, with minimal or no lifting required if you use a vacuum to clean the pods out with the simple flip up magnetically secured debris tarp. The Airdrag is also infinitely repairable, so when parts wear out, it is possible to replace individual components instead of the entire unit. The Seeker Airdrag can also stay out sweeping for longer when paired with the Seeker Airmag FOD Magnetic Sweeper, since the magnet will catch any metallic / ferrous debris before it hits the debris collection pods, saving space in the pods for non-ferrous debris. Don Wyatt, the airfield operations manager at the Tulsa International Airport ran the full Seeker FOD Management System and the following video shows what he thinks about the full Seeker system for FOD sweeping at his joint military / civilian airfield.
When did you guys receive this?
We received it last Tuesday—a week ago today, actually. We put it together, and we’ve been running the magnet setup for about a week now. We’ve been picking up all kinds of metal object debris, foreign object debris, which has been great.
We have an F-16 unit here at Tulsa, and our wire bristles for our snow operations have been issued. It’s been doing great picking up the bristles and towing them around the ramp. We’ve been picking up everything from luggage tags to rivets from the ramp.
Yeah, that’s a common one—the zippers on luggage and stuff like that comes off, rivets. We’ve been running the sweeper today, which has been great. We’ve been picking up, on the ramp, rocks and stuff the magnet’s not picking up, which is great to keep the ramp all nice and clean for our airline operations going on here—so they keep from getting FOD damage. So, everything’s been going great. We like this. We’re going to be doing a lot of running and sweeping with it for the airfield. Looking forward to winter operations, doing the wire bristles, keeping it so the Air Guard can be flying and not so worried about the bristles for their engine.
Yeah. So what’s the point of taking everything off—like out of there? You don’t want people getting blasted by rocks when the jets take off, right? Is that a concern? That’s what I was thinking.
Anyway, it’s not a concern where we’re at here, but when we get around to the—like, if you’re at Tulsa, when the aircraft back up, you know they’re blowing—they may blow rocks across the ramp to the other airlines or knock a window out or something. So we go in there and we get in as close as we can with all the equipment and clean up the center area. Then the airlines are responsible for cleaning out to that area. If they’ll move their equipment up, we will get in closer. So that’s it. We pick up the luggage tags, the rocks, and anything else that they drop out there. So that’s a good thing for the spa sweeper and the magnet.
Yeah, just kind of keeping everyone from sandblasting each other, right? They’re saying the sweeper has been picking up sand also and even small, like sand debris, so that’s even great. Then I don’t have to get my vac truck out here so much.
Yeah, that’s true. I saw you guys had a couple pails full of metal already.
Yes, it was mostly wire bristles still, just from the snow—from, you know, when’s the last time it snowed here? Yeah, January. Yeah, January was actually the last time, but we swept around the edge of the ramp, and that’s where—because we push the snow to the edge of the ramp and that’s usually where it goes off in the grass. So the magnets actually have been sweeping up right next to the grass and pulling the snow bristles up anyway.
Well, it’s been working. Yeah, we’ve got a couple—you guys, we just keep testing it out, and if you’ve got anything that you want improved, we’ll try to fix it for you.
Yeah, we like the setup here on the magnets. They’re very strong, so we set it up—We’re getting all kinds of—we like the handles to clean up after we dump the magnet off in the pail bucket, so we don’t have to go constantly back and forth.
Yeah, so we can empty out while we’re out there. You can kind of see where we’re picking up the most, spot-on, right?
Yeah, so you can put debris from one area in one bucket and then in a different area—you see where the problem is most of the time, see where we’re getting most of the FOD.
Yeah, and what kind of FOD. So, we’ll get zipper tags and all kinds of stuff up here; we’re not going to get those on the runway—we’re going to get more bolts and screws and rivets on the runway.
Yep. Yeah, this thing’s handy with the power sticks on there. It makes it easy; you don’t have to bend over and sweep it up or anything.
We love the power sticks because we don’t have to sweep with a broom and dustpan. Makes it a lot easier.
Yeah, but glad it’s working out.
Yep. Now the leaving—we actually love it. Even all my O bag are like fighting to run it. Well, it’s a lot slicker than the other stuff that’s out there, just with the clean-off and everything.
Well, the amount of power with the magnets can pick up—even we’re picking up a lot of fine metal dust with it.
Yeah, which is phenomenal, especially—we have it right now sitting on the highest level up and it’s still picking up the metal dust fragments, even the stuff that you get in your fingers from splinters. It’s picking that stuff up. That stuff’s not great for engines, so that stuff’s probably not great for the engines. You know, the fine dust gets in there pretty easily; it’ll suck that up, so that is great for that. And then the thing behind there, towing—that will pick up the rocks and the pebbles right behind it.
Yeah, it’s pretty handy. That’s why it’s called the full FOD management system. You get the metal, you get everything else—zip ties, cigarette butts, whatever. And with the whole setup here, it’s great. It’s easy to hook up once it’s all built; it’s easy to set up and tow behind, with just a normal F-150 truck. It’s easy to store in our facility. The only issue is if you have metal grates in your storage barn, it’ll suck those up, so you’ve got to be careful with that, but that just shows how strong those magnets are.
Yeah, the magnet in that thing—they have it set so it’s north-south, north-south, north-south, so it’s stronger in that little bit of area, because we knew you have to set it low, right? So this thing is set up so in that 3-inch, it’s way stronger, but if you put it like 6 inches, it’d be weaker.
Yeah, so it’s just a really concentrated field, and then it’s a really wide magnet, so you can hold a ton of stuff on it. Because we know you’re moving fast and, you know, more surface area—more time the magnet has to pick it up, too.
And we—we’ve been running it. I ran it all day one day, and we got a lot of it, like I say, off the R Terminal ramp real well.
Yeah, that’s usually where people are, especially because they’re shipping and everything, right, too. They’ve got pallets going in those planes. You’ll find a lot of stuff from that, too—the pallets, the nails, and that kind of stuff. And we’ve been around our main runway; we went up and down our runway and still picked up some wire bristles from over six months ago.
Yeah, well, people are always shocked how much is actually out there.
Yep. I remember the first time I went to the London Airport to sweep, I was like, that’s a little scary how much stuff’s out there. Normal people would be surprised at how many nuts and bolts and rivets you pick up on the runway, and who knows where they came from—and do you want to know? And you’re like, yeah, I don’t want to know. Yeah, it came from something. We’re going to assume it wasn’t critical, because I didn’t hear about it later.
Yeah, so. All right, well, I think it’s time to go get some catfish.
Okay, nice little unit. Get the flags so you can back up, I guess. I don’t know; I don’t think anyone’s going to try to back this thing up with both of them together—that’s like double pivot action. That’s like moving a farm trailer.
Yeah, no kidding. It’s easy to back up without that on there.
Yeah, well, it stays together pretty well.
Okay, well, I think that’s everything on my list, so I think we’re good to go.
Thanks a lot, Don.
The Seeker Airdrag Passive FOD Sweeper for Airports can collect debris at speeds up to 25mph. Each of the thirteen pods ride on four 5” inch high speed wheels with precision bearings so the only pieces of the sweeper that touch the ground are the wheels, brush and polyurethane debris ramp tips. Having fewer pieces touch the ground reduces the total wear on the sweeper. The base trailer of the Airdrag rides on the same 16.5” inch x 6.5” inch wheels that the Airmag portion of the Seeker system uses.
All wear parts on the Seeker Airdrag are designed to be unlosable to prevent further FOD contamination and to be inexpensive to replace to keep the cost of ownership low over time. Since the Seeker Airdrag Debris Collection Pods are all modular, if one pod gets broken or severely damaged it can just be entirely swapped out for a replacement. The Seeker Airdrag FOD Sweeper is great for runways, aprons, gates, and taxiways. The replaceable polyurethane tips scrape so close to the ground that the Sweeper can pick up pieces of paper and napkins at speed. So, collecting larger pieces of debris like zippers, rocks, or stray nonferrous fasteners is no problem with the Seeker Airdrag FOD Sweeper.
The Seeker Airdrag 180 can be folded up and used in a narrow 60” inch configuration, or have the wings folded down for a wide 180” inch configuration. The Seeker Airdrag can also just be ordered as a single 60” inch sweeper. This versatility makes it great for open spaces like runways and taxiways, and tighter areas like between gates at smaller airports. See the following videos to see the Seeker Airdrag Passive Airport FOD Sweeper cleaning up around the Toronto Pearson International Airport’s Taxiways and Gates.
The closest we’re getting is we’re getting paper off the ground. So, uh, we’re now in the gate area, which is where everyone’s getting on the planes, and this is where you’re going to get broken luggage and shipping components and stuff like that. So, like I said when we were in Oklahoma, you want to make sure these things are swept because when the planes start reversing or start turning on the jets to start moving, any debris that’s on the ground can get picked up and thrown at everybody else. And they don’t like it when they sandblast each other’s planes.
So we’re going on a nice little slow ride around here down at the terminals. This is where everybody’s getting on their planes to go on vacation this time of year, and we’re out here making sure they get to their destinations safely and the planes don’t get damaged from blowing at each other across the apron.
So, Paulo mentioned to me that this is the area where they’re going to get the most kind of luggage debris, broken zippers, that sort of stuff, because everybody’s loading their luggage onto planes. Last time John and I were here, we were just checking out, we were delivering this thing and putting a new tongue on the magnet, and we were looking at their collected debris bins, and there was a ton of zippers and locks and all sorts of stuff like that.
So, um, that’s only the metal parts of what gets picked up, because that was just the magnet they were using. So now that they have the drag, they can pick up a lot more nonferrous items, like just, you know, plastic handles off luggage, wood that might come off pallets if they’re loading cargo planes, all that good stuff that can cause damage and hurt people if it gets caught in a jet blast.
So this thing does have its flags on the back so the truck driver can see exactly where the thing is, but they haven’t looked too closely on the ground. And then nice and easy, we run around, so there’s lots of space to pick up broken luggage in this thing while it’s running around.
So this sweeper is available as this 17 ft wide variant, or you can also order it just as the center section to hook behind one Seeker Air Magnet, so you could have the Seeker Air Mag with one single Air Drag behind it, or you can do the triple setup and have three magnets and the 17 ft wide drag setup. So that allows for getting the tighter spaces. These guys also have the Piranha magnet, but they just have a single one instead of the triple Piranha, and they said they often use the Piranha for tighter areas like this just ’cause it’s easier to get in and around and then they don’t have to bother unhooking the Air Mag. But you can separate the Air Mag into single pieces to do tighter areas if you need to, or, like these guys have, just two magnets, one for different things because the Piranha is best for lower speed ’cause it has less power than the Air Mag. So it makes sense to use it in the apron where you’re going a lot slower than you would on the runway.
So the drag here seems to be behaving pretty nicely. We are saying its top speed is about 40 mph, but you don’t really want to go that fast. It’s not going to work as well—it will work, just not as well as it would if it was slower. So, I think we recommended 10 to 25 miles an hour at the most. So with this unit hooked to the back of the Air Mag, you’re going to have a complete cleaning solution for any FOD, even in the winter. This thing will fill up full of snow in the winter, but once everything’s swept, you get those bristles off the ground. This is the best unit you can get for it, and like I said before, everything is modular, so you can just pull it off, fix what you need to, you don’t have to replace everything when one thing breaks. Easier maintenance, easier cleaning, more effective sweeping method—it’s just a better overall FOD management solution that we’ve been testing with Pearson Airport, London Airport, and Tulsa Airport, Kitchener-Waterloo Airport.
And, um, yeah, we’ve just been making this thing according to how everybody says they want it. So when you’re designing something for professionals, why not ask the professionals what they want? So that’s exactly what we’re doing—this is our application-driven design and purpose here. So every feature these guys said they wanted, we got it for them, and that’s why it comes out as a complete solution and not something that just half-works.
So again, this is our first non-magnetic product here at Blue Equipment. This is just a friction sweeper, highly modular, specially designed with professionals in mind. Makes it easier to do your job, people are happier to do it. Everybody we’ve talked to says operating our competitor’s products is a real chore, and no one likes doing it. Every time you assign someone to have to do it, they complain, so that’s why we’ve made this thing as easy as possible while still doing a perfect job of sweeping everything off the ground. I mean, for God’s sake, we got paper off the ground. We can sweep up paper—there’s nothing left on that runway after we’re through, especially when you pair this thing with a magnet.
So if you have the magnet in front of it, you’re not taking up any space in the debris bins to hold metal, because the magnet will have it all. So you can have just non-metallic debris in the Air Drag, and that’s what we saw when we just went through—there was already some steel bristles from the snow brushes and nuts and bolts that have fallen off things, hopefully not planes. Those are taking up space in the pods. So if you have the magnet in front of it, you’re going to have more space for you in the pods, which means you can sweep for longer and spread the load out between the magnet and the drag system.
Here’s an addition of what we’ve got after sweeping the gates: lots of luggage tags, Tucci, Designo, a lot of washers—those are just plastic washers off something, some kind of a fabric cable tie—lots more stuff. So before, out on the apron, all we were getting was just pebbles and that kind of stuff, pebbles and grass and organic matter. Out here, we’re getting pieces of luggage and shipping things—look, the top of a Kleenex box and a nickel, yeah, making you money. And here’s some—I don’t know, that’s just a napkin. So we’re picking up napkins with this thing, that’s how close we’re getting to the ground. And here’s a United flight schedule that I’m not going to show you.
So, between your zipper tags, your washers, your money, your napkins, your paper, you’re getting all of that out of these gates and out of the way of the jets and out of the way of everybody, ’cause you don’t need to have a bunch of crap laying around on your gates and in your airport picked up. So we just dumped all those out for dramatic effect. We had them in nice piles, but most likely what you’re going to do is bring this thing back to base and then just vacuum it out—it’s a lot faster and easier. But yeah, lots of rocks, lots of zippers, all kinds of good stuff in there. I even got 5 cents out of there, so we made some money today.
we’re out at Pearson Airport once again with our new Seeker Air Drag FOD sweeper. This is one of the airports we’ve been working with to develop this. These guys have used one of our competitors in the past, but we are now trying out the new Air Drag, which has more modular components so you can fix it once it breaks down.
These guys have less grooved pavement than Tulsa, Oklahoma, where we were testing the other one, so this should result in a smoother surface to sweep off of, and we should likely be able to get it a lot cleaner. Because while this thing will clean down into grooves, it’s not going to clean down into very deep grooves, so the smoother pavement is going to work better for cleaning.
This Air Drag is built to be towed behind the Seeker Air Mag, which is part of our complete FOD management system. The Air Mag will pick up any ferrous debris that might be on the runway, such as the snow bristles or any other metal pieces, and then the drag is going to get anything else like gravel, grass, paper, plastic—whatever else might be out there.
We’re going to run this thing up and down the apron real quick before a plane comes and gets us, and we’ll see how it works. So, the Seeker Air Drag is built with a 17 ft sweeping width, which keeps it in the same towing profile as the magnet. The magnet only has a 15 ft sweeping width, but the tires on the outside take up about 2 ft, so the furthest point out is the sweeper. That’s a full 17 ft sweeping width, which keeps it in the same profile as the magnet, so it’s not too hard to move it around. You don’t have to worry about one thing being wider than the other, and it gives you just a little bit more sweeping area.
These guys are running this thing across their apron section. This is where the planes will just go to get into the terminal and also go into the runway. You can see on the back, the Seeker Air Drag FOD sweeper, but it’s a very busy airport, so we’re standing out here on the tarmac. If a plane comes, I have to jump in the truck very quickly.
This thing is a step up over our competitors as it’s a lot easier to clean out. We’ve seen that from our guys in Tulsa—they’ve reported back since we’ve been there, said it’s a lot easier to clean because you don’t have to lift a whole unit up in the air to clean it out. You either only have to lift a little bit of a pod, which weighs about 20 lbs, or simply use a vacuum cleaner to clean out the hatches. As you saw in the other videos, there’s just a little fabric thing that’s held down by magnets, just a piece of fabric that keeps any debris inside, no matter how fast you’re going. That just keeps any debris you’ve collected inside the pod, and then when you’re ready to clean it out, you just flip up the fabric and you can either use a vacuum cleaner or just shake it clean.
These guys have already been pretty impressed. We just towed this thing from the maintenance area out to the spot on the apron, and we’re already picking up all kinds of stuff, so it’s impressing them already. It seems to be sweeping a lot up. We’ve picked up some grass clippings, which is interesting, and some paper. I think that’s those guys coming down the left side here. There’s the drag coming down the apron, so that’s going to be clearing off all the debris. You can see the flags hanging off the side—that’s just for extra visibility so anybody else on the runway, like me, can see it’s coming and not cut too close to the truck.
Here’s the jet right beside it. These guys are going to come in the view just perfectly right behind that jet while it’s spooling up. You see we got the escort vehicle there and then the truck towing the Air Drag.
So this sweeper Air Drag is part of our Seeker FOD management system. It’s a comprehensive solution to keeping your airport nice and tidy. You’ll get all the metallic debris using the Air Mag, and then you’ll get everything else using the Air Drag. So it’s a very handy solution. It’s very modular; all the parts are replaceable, any wear parts. So when it does wear out—because everything has wear parts, if you’re sweeping on concrete—we’ll get you any parts you need and then get them shipped to you quickly.
This thing has 13 pods, and you can, in theory, just keep clipping them on and on if you want. So you could just keep going behind yourself if you wanted, or if you wanted to keep extra pods on hand, you could do that as well.
So is that thing going? I think we’ll get him to swing back around and see what we’ve collected. You see it’s a nice flat thing, it’ll tow pretty comfortably up to 40 mph, but the ideal operating speed is about 10 to 25 mph at the most. Like I said earlier, these guys’ best results have been at about 15–20 km an hour.
So here he is coming in after a run up and down the apron, and we’ll get him to see what’s in the back after one run up and down the runway—not even the runway, just the apron. We’ve got some plant life. It looks like the little magnets on the top even got some more bristles. We got paper, what looks like a dead mouse, a nut—yeah, lots of little bits of stone, nuts, bolts. We even got some of the metallic debris, so if we had the magnet hooked up, you wouldn’t get any of that metallic stuff in here.
But yeah, seems to be working good. Got some kind of a carcass there, some paper, lots of big stones, some plant life—everything and everything. You got plant life, you got metal, you got…
The Seeker Airdrag Friction FOD Sweeper Accessory pairs with the Seeker Airmag FOD Magnetic Sweeper to create immaculately clean airfields. Utilizing magnetic and friction sweepers allows maintenance workers to do both jobs at once which increases efficiency in terms of time and increases the efficiency of the friction sweeping since the magnet collects ferrous FOD before it gets to the debris pods, leaving more space in the pods for non ferrous debris. Both Sweepers have the same towing footprint so you can be sure where each sweeper is while towing, they can be operated independently or together, for whatever the task demands. The Seeker Complete FOD Management System can operate at speeds up to 25mph so it can make short work of cleaning the wide-open spaces present at airfields.
So here it is, the Seeker FOD management system all the way in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So this is our complete FOD management system for runways. We’re out here in Tulsa on their oldest piece of tarmac, and we’ve got the mag and the drag setup. So the mag will pick up any metallic items, and then the drag picks up the rest.
And Don was just saying that in the past, with other FOD systems, he’s picked up snakes, so he said watch out when you’re cleaning the thing out in case you don’t get a water moccasin in there.
So these guys are just going to run up and down the runway here, just collecting anything they can. Doesn’t seem to be too much out here today. We were just looking in the bins when we stopped.
So this is 30x zoom. We’re zooming all the way down there. You can see how big this runway is—those guys are at least a quarter mile out now. And that 15 ft sweeping width you get on the magnet and the drag just allows you to cover this area faster. So you’d probably have to do about four or five passes, and this whole runway would be cleared.
Let me zoom out here. We’re way zoomed in and it’s wobbling in the wind here, but you can see how big this runway is, even just compared to the magnet.
So we’ve got the magnet and the drag on here, so we’re doing a full cleanup job. Don’s coming by, and then we’ll probably pull back to the barn shortly because he’s got a meeting to go to. And we’ll show you how to clean it off and show the guys here how to clean it off and how to see what we’ve collected and everything, all that good [Applause] stuff.
So the magnet comes in a 79 in and a 204 in sweeping width, so you can get the single, which is a 79 in, or 204, so that’s five pods and 13 pods, which gives you a full 15 ft sweeping width with no gaps in the middle, so you never miss anything. So you can hear them coming. We had the F-16s taking off this morning—they should be coming back shortly.
There you go, the F sweeper and the magnet all in [Applause] one. Got some real Dutch angles here because this tripod’s a little funky. Look at that—that’s a nice view, isn’t it? Look at that magnet going down the runway with the big drag on the back.
So this is our 15 ft model. The wings come up on the edges like a farm applicator, like a fertilizer applicator. The wings pull up, and then it goes to about 8 ft wide, so it’s easy to move around and store. These guys said they want a hinging trailer hitch on the front so that can fold up as well. They’ll probably fabricate that themselves, but we’ll take that into account and maybe come up with something later to do that.
And he’s going to give us a drive-by here. We’ve got the terminal in the background—good old Tulsa, Oklahoma.
We’ll bring it back, go to the maintenance area, and clean it off and see what we’ve got. So we’ll show you the process of cleaning off. You’ve seen it probably a million times for the Seeker Air Mag, so we’ll show you the air drag this time—a whole different game.
So if I could get low here, I can show you how much clearance there is to the ground, but these guys have found it’s best set at 3 in on the magnet. They said it picks up everything they’ve got, and then they don’t bottom out anywhere where there are lumps and bumps, which is what we pretty much recommend. You rarely ever use the 1 in setting unless you’re on, like, glass, but the 3 in allows you to kind of collect more as well because you’ve got 3 inches of clearance for stuff to kind of build up.
So with these two together, you’ve got a pretty complete sweeping system, and your runways should be—you’d be able to eat off them.
A: All debris collection pods fit on storage rack
B: Latch system keeps collection pods in place during travel, included strap and pins keeps wings up
C: Wings fold up when not in use
FOD contamination poses a significant hazard for military and commercial aircraft. Military aircraft’s engines have inlets that are closer to the ground which can suck in debris from the ground, potentially causing millions of dollars of damage.
When operating a commercial airport, the incoming and outgoing aircraft create significant jet blast. When turning around near the gates, if there is debris like rocks, paper, zipper tags, or metal debris present, these pieces of debris become projectiles and the plane essentially sandblasts everything in the exhaust of its engines, causing harm to personnel and other planes / equipment in the area.
FOD control is essential for safety at any airport, but especially if the area is used by military aircraft, since they are generally at higher risk of FOD damage to the engines. Accept nothing less than the best to keep your airfield’s FOD situation under control, accept nothing less than the Seeker Complete Airfield FOD Removal System. To keep FOD under control in every part of the airfield
Here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, these guys are setting up the new Seeker Air drag. All of the pods get stored on the center section of the trailer here. They all just kind of stack up and latch onto what looks like a ladder-type rack, and then they get removed and placed onto their respective port points on the trailer. You see they’re all kind of laid out so there’s complete coverage here. Those just clip onto each other—the front ones clip onto the trailer, and then the back one will clip onto the front two, and vice versa all the way down so you get complete coverage.
This is our triple setup, so you get about a 15-foot sweeping width. We’re also going to sell this as a single unit, which will be a 74-inch sweeping width, and that setup took a grand total of about 2 minutes, maybe 10 minutes at the most. Once this is set up, I believe you have to take the pins out to let the arms down and then attach everything together. It all just kind of clips together, and then you’re ready to sweep.
So this is our FOD sweeper—it’s not a magnet for once, but it goes behind this magnet. The idea is the Seeker Air Mag will pick up any of the metallic debris that might be on the runway, and then these FOD sweepers will pick up anything else. This will pick up anything about an inch and a half—the biggest thing it’ll pick up—but any rocks, cigarette butts, wires, wrenches, zip ties, whatever. Anything non-metallic that didn’t get picked up by the magnet will get caught by this, so you get a nice clean runway.
We got F-16s taking off over here—these guys are training today—and we’re just going to go out and sweep the runways. These guys do have one of our competitor’s FOD sweepers, a very popular one, and we’re going to see how our Seeker Air drag performs compared to the competitors. The one thing they’ve said already is they like that there are replaceable parts on this one. Their competitor’s FOD sweeper—anytime anything wears out, you need to order a whole new sweeper. With this setup, all you have to do is just order some parts from us. We can ship them to you, and you just replace the parts as needed. We sell the wheels, the brushes, the little pickup ramps down here—there are little plastic teeth that run against the runway, and those wear out eventually so you can replace them. Yeah, it just runs forever. You don’t ever have to order a new one; you just keep replacing parts, and it’ll keep working.
We’re going to head out on the runway here. I’m going to sit in the back of the truck on a cooler, and we’re going to see it in action here in beautiful Tulsa, Oklahoma, on the military-slash-civilian base. We got our Seeker Air Mag and our Seeker Air drag—these two are a complete FOD management system—and we’re going to run out on the runway here and see what we can pick up.
These guys have only had this magnet for less than a week now. We just shipped it here last week. They’ve been using the magnet to good results so far—they showed us the debris pile, which is in one of the onboard buckets back there, and they got a pretty good pile of exactly what you’d expect. These guys are far south, but it does snow, so you get the snow bristles all over the place. This is the first time they’ve actually used the drag setup, which is our new non-magnetic FOD collection system, so that’s on the back there. The idea is the front magnets get anything metallic, and then the back will get anything non-metallic so you get full coverage.
We just flew in here last night, landed right at that airport, and now we’re out here in the morning getting the shots. We got planes flying all around us—we just had the F-16s take off this morning, which I sadly missed a shot on. But yeah, we’re just cruising around here picking up debris. This thing’s towing really nicely.
So the Air drag, which is behind the Air Mag here, can be used as its own standalone trailer—it’s just connected in the center here to the magnet, so you can use one without the other. But when they’re together, it’s a full system that will just collect anything that might be on the runway. These guys have the snow bristles a lot out here, and that’s a real issue on this airport, because if you take a look at any passenger jet, you’ll notice the jets—the intake for the fans is way up off the ground. Military planes—the intake for the air is real close to the ground, so they have a problem with any FOD being on the runway, which could be, you know, rocks, cigarette butts, zip ties, aluminum fasteners which are common on planes—that’ll all get picked up by the Air drag.
Because this is a military base, it’s really critical to make sure everything’s collected. These guys were just saying that in the winter they get into arguments with the National Guard here—like, “We want to take our planes out,” and “Well, you can’t today, there’s stuff all over the runway.” Now they got something to pick it all up.
They did have one of our competitor sweepers here. It’s a little more difficult to use than ours, and there are no replacement parts available, so when it runs out or when it wears out, it wears out and you can’t use it again.
The big selling point of this thing is it’s a modular system that folds up really nicely for storage, and all the parts are replaceable. You can replace the wheels, you can replace the brushes, you can replace the little drag teeth that skim along the concrete—because they’re skimming along concrete, they’re made of plastic, so they’re going to wear out eventually. This thing seems to be towing pretty well. We’re going maybe 20 miles per hour—our recommended top speed is 25, so you wouldn’t want to go much faster than that. You can see a big plane landing in the back there—cool.
This Seeker Air drag has the same wheels as the Air Mag—it’s just the 16-1/2 inch, five-bolt wheels, air-filled. You’re not likely to get a flat tire on these things because the magnet is in front of it, so the magnet will collect anything that’s going to give you a flat tire. There’s a nice Southwest jet that just landed.
This thing’s pretty fast to use. We just went down the one taxiway in the span of, what, the last 7 minutes I’ve been yapping? Now we’re going to take a turn; now we’re on the grooved pavement. The one thing these guys wanted to check was to make sure the teeth would hold up while it was running over the grooved pavement, so that’s what we’re doing now. We’re running on this grooved stuff, and we’re going to see if the teeth start breaking off, because these teeth are like a really plasticized rubber. It’s TPU—thermoplastic urethane—so they are flexible, they’re designed to be flexible, but on this grooved pavement, we’ll see if they catch onto the bottom and get ripped off by the grooves or if it just skims along like it should.
You can see they’re bouncing away back there—that should be fine, they look like they’re working okay. If you see one really take a big bump, then you’ll know that something got caught. Like we said, the teeth are all replaceable, and I believe this unit comes with a spare set. When you order it, it comes with a spare set of teeth, so if it does wear out—when it does wear out, it’s a wear item—you can replace it. We can ship these things out really fast because they’re not magnetic. Normally, we’re slowed down by shipping stuff on the ground because it’s magnetic; this stuff’s not, because this is our first non-magnetic product here. Blue SH equipment, not a magnet, it’s an FOD sweeper, so it can ship real fast.
Like Don was saying here, if you got a problem where you need the thing out the next day, then you got bigger problems. These things are available as a triple setup like you have here—same as the sweeper, so you got the three magnets in the front and the three-wide sweeper on the back. For both cases, you can order a single magnet and a single dragnet basically, so the drag can come as a single unit or a triple setup like we got here, depending on the size of your runway and what you want to spend on it. Really, that’s the big factor.
But it seems to be working good so far—we’re cruising around beautiful Tulsa, Oklahoma. It’s already getting hot out here; we’re in late July, so it’s the dog days of summer and it’s hot, but we’re going to be out here cruising around. We got a nice breeze, and we’re going to see what we picked up. These guys have never run this drag out here yet—this is the first time we’re operating it, so when we pull off the runway here, we’ll take a look and see what we got.
Our Industry partners across North America always had a common complaint with regards to other friction airfield sweepers; they are cumbersome to set up and use. The Seeker Airdrag Airfield FOD Sweeper solves this problem by breaking up the total sweeping width into thirteen smaller pods. This lets the operator setup the sweeper easily as each pod only weighs about 20lbs. When a job is less physically demanding to do and more efficient, workers are often more inclined to do it well, and more often. Efficient work makes operators happy to do the job and keeps an airfield cleaner from it. The FOD sweeping pod system also allows the debris to be cleaned out easier using a vacuum or the onboard debris trough to dump the pods into to then transfer it to the onboard buckets (not pictured here).
We’re here at the Tulsa International Airport in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and this is our new Seeker Air Drag FOD Sweeper. So, it’s from Blue Streak—it’s not a magnet for once—but it’s a FOD control system that works in tandem with our Seeker Air Mag to collect everything that isn’t magnetic. So, you put the magnet in front of these so all the metallic stuff and magnetic stuff gets picked up by the magnets, and then everything else gets picked up by these little pods. We’ll go over later, in a little closer detail, how they work, but right now I’m just going to show you how it’s set up.
So, we sell this as a single wide or a triple wide, similar to the Air Mag. So, you could have a single Air Mag and a single Air Drag, or the triple and the triple, or a single and a triple. They fold up nicely for storage and just moving them around. I’m just going to show you how they go together. There are just a couple pins on the back here that hold this up. Then this arm comes down, so the pin just goes back in here just for storage—it doesn’t need to be on there when it’s moving. And then, same on the other side, the arm comes down and the pin can go back up here, which is where they’re supposed to go.
Now that we’ve got our arms down, I’m just going to unload these pods off the storage rack and place them on the arms, and I’ll start on this side. So, these are held in with a little bit of a spring tension thing. This black lever here kind of locks it in place, so as you lift it up, it releases it, and then it hooks on here to the corresponding points on the trailer. You just drop them on like this, and then it locks on and it won’t come off. I’ll just do that for the rest of them here.
These things weigh about 20 lb each, so they’re not too hard to move around. They are really heavy duty, though, so it’s steel and aluminum, so there is a bit of weight to it, but it’s not an exhausting thing to do—even when it’s 35° in Tulsa.
So, once you get all of them attached to their points on the trailer, the rest of them will go in between the ones that are already on the trailer, so then you get a nice, overlapping sweeping pattern. On the back of these trailers, they all have little hooks on the back that interface with the hook on the front, and then you can attach them together just like that.
So, if you just kept buying more of these, you could really just keep going forever and ever and ever, but 13 is what it comes with when you buy the triple and then five when you buy the single. And then, you get the nice storage rack, which holds them all, which is pretty handy. All the parts on this thing are replaceable, so when stuff wears out, you just get some new parts, put it back together, and you can use this thing forever.
There you go—now they’re all set up, and you got the full sweeping setup. We’ve got the drag and the mag. We’re on the apron right now, so we’re going to just go along where the planes are, just do the ramps, the taxiways, that sort of thing—just pick up everything we can, and then I’ll report back with whatever we pick up.
The Seeker Airdrag Airport FOD Sweeper was brought to the London airport for the annual airshow to clean the taxiway and ground display area prior to the arrival of all the show planes. The taxiway was cleaned using a brush and blower truck before the Seeker Airdrag went out. Even with the truck cleaning in the morning, the Seeker Airdrag was able to pick up 70lbs of debris from the taxiway, apron, and ground display area mostly consisting of gravel. Just after the ground display area was swept the C-5 Super galaxy and C-17 Globemaster were brought in and demonstrated why it is so important to keep airfields clean, as they dusted spectators while turning around from their exhaust picking up sand left on the pavement, but there was no gravel to cause any substantial damage to surrounding personnel or equipment. Check out the videos below to see the Seeker FOD Sweeper cleaning before the London Airshow.
Through here earlier, you’ll see those F-18s in the background where we just were. We brought about maybe 25–30 lbs of gravel; we basically filled up our 5-gallon pail—a lot more than they had on the apron this morning. So we’re just going through here now, again, to do a couple more passes now that we’ve got the Super Fortress in here.
A lot of planes are coming in. Just saw two F-16s—you’ll probably see them on another video. So there you go, there’s our secret air drag right in front, there’s a C-17 and a C-5. So there’s our airdrag working exactly as it should. We’re pulling up tons of gravel, getting this place all cleaned up for the show tomorrow so nobody gets blasted when the engines start.
These guys just turned around—the guys in that big C-5 we just passed—and they turned their engines on and started moving. They were spraying a bit of dust everywhere, but there was no gravel flying. That’s because we already went through with this secret air drag friction sweeper: with its very close clearance to the ground, it basically just scrapes everything right off the top and gets almost everything off the ground. Obviously, we can’t get dust off the ground—it’s not a vacuum truck—but it gets damn near close to it. The size of pebbles we are pulling up is quite small, and all of those little pebbles can become projectiles when they get caught in the blast of this big old thing up here.
Each one of those engines is about the size of a car, and they are going to be spraying everything that was on the apron into whoever’s behind them.
Hey, you probably saw that time lapse. So, now we got our FOD system deployed, and we’re going to head on down past all those nice planes we just drove by and make sure everything’s nice and clean. So, as you’ve probably seen in our other videos—or this might be the first video you’re seeing—this is our Seeker Air Drag FOD friction sweeper, and we got lots of people already coming in for the air show today, even though it doesn’t start till tomorrow. But they’re probably just coming in, watching everybody set up, watching the people get ready for the show tomorrow. So today, everybody’s coming in. You’ll see when we drive by, there’s the British Air Force—they’ll be on our right in the Red Arrows—and they’ve been doing… they’re going to be taking off, making sure the planes are all in good shape and just getting used to the airspace.
So we’re running our new—this is the new premier friction FOD sweeper on the market. This is our Seeker Air Drag. It’s the second part of our FOD management system that comes with the Seeker Air Mag and Seeker Air Drag. They can be used individually or together, so this can hook to the back of the magnet, and then you have a complete cleaning system. But today we’re just running the drag just to get everything off the DVE. So we’re out here in London Airport, and we’re going to get this thing run along the runway a couple times, make sure everything’s nice. We’ll do the apron a little bit, make sure all of the staging areas for the planes are clean, and, yeah, we’ll do… this is a 17 ft sweeping width. And here you go, here’s the British guys on our right—Royal Air Force. These guys have nice planes, they don’t want their stuff getting broken, so we’re going to make sure there’s nothing on the ground for them to have to worry about because these jets move a lot of air, and the inlets are lower to the ground than commercial planes. So we are just going to make sure that everything is copacetic for them.
So like I was saying, this is 17 ft sweeping width on this thing, so we can cover about a third of the whole runway at once, and that lets you do a nice quick job cleaning the whole runway up. So this is still just the taxi here, we’re not on the runway yet, but we’re going to clean up everything, like I said, the staging areas. So the way this sweeper works is there’s a broom on the ground and there is a—oh, here’s the Snowbirds right here too—there’s a broom head on the ground in front of a bunch of ramps, and then the ramps have ridges on them that will pick up debris and retain it.
So the ridges on the ramps, like I showed in the other videos from Tulsa, are kind of scoop-shaped, so stuff will go up and not come down. And so the brush will kind of kick everything up in the air, and then the scoop-shaped ramps retain everything and make sure you don’t lose any debris. And then it’s all collected in the back of these pods. There’s a little bin, so everything kind of gets pushed to the back because we’re obviously moving forward, and then that little tarp on top keeps everything in place. And the tarp is held in place with magnets.
So this is Blue Streak’s first venture into non-magnetic sweepers, and this was designed in cooperation with, not only London Airport but Pearson Airport, Tulsa, all over the place. We’ve been talking to people, seeing what they want, seeing what’s important to them, and mostly we’ve found out it’s all about ease of use. Our competitive product—which you probably know the name of—is a real pain to use, and anybody that’s assigned to run the thing doesn’t like it. These guys almost lost their ankles here.
So this thing, everything is modular on it. So, pieces do get worn out, which they will because it’s a friction-based system, so things are going to wear out. All the parts are replaceable, and if one pod gets broken, you can replace each pod individually. There are 13 pods total for a total of 17 ft sweeping width, and you don’t have to lift the whole thing up to clean it out. All you got to do is just pull one pod out and shake it out, or just use a vacuum cleaner and vacuum it out by pulling the little tarp on the top off.
So, we got the RAF here from England and we have the RCAF from Canada here. I don’t think the Americans are here yet, but they are coming. This is voted the number one air show in North America, so we’re just making sure the number one air show’s got the number one clean runway, like the Streak equipment. We’re doing this just to keep everything clean, make sure everyone has a good, safe air show, and hopefully we can get some input from the military guys and see what they think about this product compared to all the other friction sweepers on the market.
We also have our Seeker Air Mag here—that’s not attached right now, but we will probably hook it up at some point and drag it around as well, see what these guys think. So, you see we’ve done two passes. We’re about halfway done the runway now. We’ll probably go up once more on the side—or not the runway but the taxiway—so this will be all clean, and then once we get this swept thoroughly, we’ll head back to the maintenance area and just see how much we’ve collected. I’m sure we got lots of gravel and stones and all that sort of stuff, but with all these people moving around and them unpacking stuff from their trailers and their planes, there’s going to be all kinds of stuff out here you can’t see, like zip ties, screws, washers, all that good stuff that comes with unloading equipment and keeping things maintained.
Got Shell Racing Team on the right. So, this is a good part for any regular airfield maintenance. You don’t have to do this just before the expensive planes show up, you can do it anytime, especially because you can get it as part of the Seeker FOD management system. So you can do your magnetic FOD sweeping and your friction FOD sweeping and get any ferrous and non-ferrous debris up quickly and efficiently and reliably using this system. Each individual pod makes up our 17 ft sweeping width, and they all overlap, so it’s a full 17 ft. And even though it is a wider sweeping width than the magnet, it’s actually the same towing profile because the magnet has the two wheels on the outsides, which take up about an additional 2 ft.
These British guys are all coming down here, looking quite smart. It’s our collection of debris running up and down the taxiway where the planes are coming in first, and then we just went to probably the staging area for the ground display vehicles. So that’s about 2 inches of consistent gravel we’ve pulled off the taxiway so far from about maybe half an hour of running this thing. So you can see all that—probably a good 25 lbs of gravel at this point, and that’s after they’ve already been through with a brush truck this morning. So just gives you a little perspective of how clean of an area this thing will give you from sweeping with it, just thanks to the brushes and the ramps on it that get a very tight clearance to the ground. So it makes sure it gets almost everything. We’ve picked up paper and napkins with this thing, so it gets real close to the ground; it just does a nice, clean scrape of everything, gets everything off the top.
When the debris bins of the Seeker Passive FOD Sweeper are full, the pods can be removed individually and dumped into the debris collection trough to transfer into the debris storage buckets, or you can simply lift the magnetically secured debris retaining tarp and vacuum the debris from the bin.
Okay, here’s the method to clean out your new Seeker Air drag fod sweeper. So, you can just pick them up and shake them out, but that is a lot more labor intensive, and it’s about 32° here now, so we’re going to do the lazy way, and we’ve got a nice little vacuum.
These covers on the back here—they’re just magnetized. Then you get a vacuum cleaner in there and get all the stuff out. There are lots of little pebbles, which is what we’re supposed to be picking up. So you just get in there, vacuum it all out, and then the little debris cover goes back on.
Do one over here—so again, there’s just a little hatch that holds all the debris in. This is magnetized to the pan, or to the tray itself, and then when you pick it up, you can just get in there with a vacuum and clean it all out.
So, this is all just full of little pebbles and rocks. That’s a big rock—holy, it’s a big one. So it’s a big rock in there, lots of little pebbles. And onto these debris trays, you can see the stuff in there.
So that’s it, that’s all you’ve got to do—just for thirteen more, pretty quick. Now these aren’t that full ’cause we’ve only been out here for a little bit, but they’re also on the ramps. You want to get it on that—let me get a camera closer here. Okay, so here’s a closeup of how to do it.
So, this little cover comes off, and you can see in the back here is where all the stuff gets collected. This is just rocks and pebbles and dirt—all kinds of crap you don’t really want in your area. And then on these ramps—you see the silver ramps in here—there will be debris on that as well, so just vacuum that out. Make sure it’s all clean, put that back on, and you’re good to go.
A: Maximum operating speed of 25mph (40kph)
B: 4-foot visibility flags to aid reversing
C: 209” sweeping width for fast coverage
When sweeping is finished, the Seeker Air Drag FOD Sweeper pods can be stored on a dedicated storage rack on the trailer, and the outer wings can fold up. This makes the sweeper condense down to about seven feet wide for easy storage and the ability to get through narrow areas. The 180 Seeker Air Drag Passive Runway FOD Sweeper can also be operated in the narrow configuration, this allows the Seeker Airdrag 180 model to operate as the 60 model if required.
Seeker Airdrag 180 (in sweeping configuration) Dimensions Top View
Seeker Airdrag 180 (in narrow configuration) Dimensions Top View
Seeker Airdrag Sweeper Configuration Comparison (above)
A: Seeker Airdrag 180 (in wide sweeping configuration)
B: Seeker Airdrag 180 (in narrow sweeping configuration)
C: Seeker Airdrag 60 (in sweeping configuration)
The Seeker Airdrag FOD Friction Sweeper comes equipped with an onboard debris containment system. A pair of five-gallon buckets with lids are attached to the storage rack of the main trailer along with a debris trough that aids in transferring debris from the collection pods to the buckets. This system allows operators to avoid dumping debris onto the ground and risking the debris getting released back into the work environment.
The Seeker Air Drag comes with a bin on the front of it that you can remove. The purpose of the bin is so you can take it around back or wherever you’re cleaning out your unit, and when you disconnect the pods, you can empty the pods just by standing them upright into the debris bin. Then you can take that debris bin and empty it into the storage pails that are also on board the unit.
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