[Newbie_Doo]

All I can say is WOW!

 

[jmartinez443]

Holy cr@p, that chopper looked very close (and above) that tanker. Nice flying.

 

[G-force]

DC-10 dropping phos-check.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1a7_1193165376

 

[MacNab]

Nice flying. Also interesting to note that they brought aerial assets (Super Scoopers) all the way down from Canada to fight these fires.

 

[Paul Tuttle]

The amazing Canadair CL-415...I did this painting of one about 10 years ago. Seeing these Fine aircraft do their thing around the world, kinda makes me proud to be a Canadian.

 

[N941WR]

Paul,

You did your usual top notch work. That picture is just outstanding!

 

[G-force]

Nice flying. Also interesting to note that they brought aerial assets (Super Scoopers) all the way down from Canada to fight these fires.

I believe we lease them every summer...always fires in the south west.

 

[1:1 Scale]

Try your hand at it

Here's a Canadair 415 flash game to kill many useless work hours with
http://bassel.free.fr/jeux/canadair.swf

 

[Ironflight]

Here's a Canadair 415 flash game to kill many useless work hours with
http://bassel.free.fr/jeux/canadair.swf

For us engineers that never had time to take French....anyone care to translate the instructions?! (My French is more limited than my Russian, which is just barely good enough to keep me from getting arrested in Moscow....)

 

[1:1 Scale]

I had to figure it out, but the left/right arrows control your speed, up/down arrows control your pitch, and the spacebar drops the water. You have to keep your speed in the blue to pick up water as you skim the lake. Good luck!

 

[Paul Tuttle]

There was a forestry base at the northern airport I worked at in the 80s. They had a rather eclectic mixture of aircraft including CL-215 (Predecessor to the CL-415) A-26 invaders, DC-6s, Grumman firecats (Tracker) various helicopters and Piper Aerostars for Bird dog or spotter aircraft.

The guys that flew these things were in my view a different breed of cat. They lived in remote areas for the fire season and were on call 7 days a week. I used to drop by and have coffee with them once in a while. One guy had something like 18000 hrs flying everything from fighters to bush planes to airliners, in his opinion, forest fire bombing was near the ultimate in flying adventure. After watching the video it would be hard to argue with him.

 

[mike newall]

Glad to hear it has proper engines - big round ones

 

[pierre smith]

Pitch up

What you guys don't appreciate is the tremendous pitch up of these tankers when the retardant is dumped.

My Air Tractor hauls 500 gallons and when I push the emrgency dump handle, it'll do a loop if I don't anticipate the pitch up. Some guys in the 602 (600 gallons) and the 802 (800 gallons) have almost stalled airplanes dumping, so they learned to slow down and fly a little flap down to minimize the pitch up. Others have recommended rolling into a 90 degree bank when they dump in a real emergency.

The 802 has computer controlled dump doors so that as the head pressure decreases, the doors open further and further, keeping the flow rate constant........really neat. There is one version called the "Fireboss" on Wipaire floats that can scoop 800 gallons from a lake or river while it's on the step, in 18 seconds!



Small fires that I've dumped on really make you on edge...but yes, it is a rush.

Regards,

 

[Jamie]

Pierre has a fantastic photo on the wall of his hangar office of him spraying a local structure fire. If you guys go down and do transition training with him look for it.