Depends:
I know of one case that a helicopter was used to haul gravel for a trail. The chopper could move a thousand pounds of gravel every 3 minutes. Two hoppers unclip one, clip the other, scat to the other end. If you used something like the kubota side by sides it would have taken 4 trips for that same thousand pounds, and well over an hour per trip. Chopper used less fuel.
So, you need to pin some more things down:
- How long is the flight from trail head to cabin?
- how long is the flight from the operations base to the trail head.
- How many cabins can be supplied from that trail head?
- Can multiple cabins be supplied in one run from the trail head.
These figres along with the specs of the aircraft, can give you a fuel/resources used per cabin visit.
Now more info:
Are choppers used to bring people in? If so, then supply can be ‘free’ as part of the people transport.
What is the flight frequency per cabin? If one flight brings in all the supplies for the winter (or summer) season then on a per night-use basis it’s small. If it’s bringing in fresh milk and brussell sprouts in every week, it will be a lot higher.
Are you going to bring in drinking water, or are you going to bring in equipment/materials to purify water on site? Is crap going to be flown out, or disposed of on site.
