Abstract: Adulticide operations rely on small droplets impinging on a flying mosquito. The intended target for the spray is the air column just above terrestrial habitats where the mosquitoes will be flying during their most active time. Measuring droplet size of the adulticide spray is an important necessity to make sure that the spray reaches the intended target. Droplet sizes can be gathered from sprayers as soon as they leave nozzle tip with a machine like KLD labs DC IV unit. Reports from this unit can be used to satisfy the calibration requirements for a handheld or truck mounted machine. But the DC IV units can seldom be used for characterizing aircraft especially if they have specialized atomizers that require the aircraft to be flying. Droplet impingers can be used for aerial equipment characterization. ADrop is a free software tool that is available to size and count droplets from slides or rods. Instructions and suggestions to set up a droplet analysis lab will be presented.
