I find this as exhilarating as the videographer. I'm not an aviator myself, so I'm not sure how difficult this is, but listening to the plane throttle up as it comes out of this dive is AWESOME!

I'm a fan of the movie 'Always' and here it is in real life.

I think that DC-10 may be operated by these guys: https://www.10tanker.com/

Did he miss the drop or was that a preventative measure to keep the fire from spreading over the ridgeline?

quote:

Originally posted by Orguss:
Did he miss the drop or was that a preventative measure to keep the fire from spreading over the ridgeline?

The purpose of phos chek airdrops is to help control fire direction and behavior, not to extinguish it.

Here is a video of a DC10 that I shot from my backyard last month.

quote:

Originally posted by medic451:


The purpose of phos chek airdrops is to help control fire direction and behavior, not to extinguish it.

Quite so. Most of the time.

quote:

Originally posted by Keystoner:
I'm a fan of the movie 'Always' and here it is in real life.

It was a good movie, but aerial firefighting and flying tankers is nothing like Always.

I'm still looking for that hangar dance in the evening, with food and drinks.

When I was back in L .A.,
The news would show vid clips of fire fighting helicopter's
hovering over
Back yard pools and
re filling their canvas water buckets.

Saw this last night on Instagram...crazy low 747 tanker pass...

https://www.instagram.com/p/CEA4vNPpcMU/

quote:

Originally posted by bendable:
When I was back in L .A.,
The news would show vid clips of fire fighting helicopter's
hovering over
Back yard pools and
re filling their canvas water buckets.

There is an urban legend/ myth about finding a scuba diver in a tree in the middle of the desert, supposedly plucked up by a firefighting helicopter filling its bucket.

It's an old joke, and in fact a number of years ago someone started a web site called "firedivers.com" as a joke. It was supposed to be a sport; a diver getting into a bucket at a dip site (bucket fill site). The website offered tee shirts and fake certificates of accomplishment.

There have been a few of cases of rescues in which fire personnel egressed in a bucket.

Bambi buckets aren't very large under smaller helicopters. While a Blackhawk will haul a 600 gallon bucket (but seldom fill it), Jetrangers and various Eurocopters typically haul a 125 gallon bucket (or smaller), but may end up with just 40 gallons at the fire. A man in the bucket would be noticed.

There are wild stories of divers picked up by scoopers, but that's not really possible, given the size of the "scoop," pick up tube, or snorkle. There have certainly been cases of fish dropped on fires, and oddball things that have been dropped in tanks end up on fires, like maglights and so forth.

When I was a lot younger and could fit into some of the tanks through the doors, I ended up getting stuck with the fairly unpleasant job of hydraulic actuator changes inside the tanks, and sealing jobs, etc.

During an active fire in a canyon, I had an engine failure in a single engine tanker (SEAT). I put the airplane down on the mountainside, and when I came to a rest, black smoke was pouring out the engine inlet. I looked past the smoke to see a Jetranger on my nose, the pilot watching me. He was coming off the dip (water pickup) when I made my radio call and came out the canyon mouth, and he followed me as I put the airplane down. He had a full bambi bucket and stayed long enough to ensure a fire didn't start under the airplane, before going back to the fire we'd been working.

The sight of that Jetranger, through the smoke on my nose, was surreal.

Here's a pretty cool shot taken on August 1, Apple Fire, Riverside County, California. Global Supertankers B747-466. Tanker 944 pulling up out of a steep canyon.



Photo credit: Steve Whitby

I saw one of these close up in mid July. On I-17 near the exit to Prescott there was the usual large wild fire and all N/B and most of the S/B traffic became a parking lot for a couple hours. It was 109 degrees!

No one was happy about the delays, but most were in awe of the DC10 so close to the ground followed by helicopters dropping buckets of water.

We had the DC-10 flying fire suppression over our neighborhood during the 2nd wildfire in our town this summer, and people have videos of it flying down into the low areas then pulling up over the hills, passing at a very low altitude crossing over the main drag through town. Flying a jetliner like it was a crop-duster! Amazing stuff.

quote:

Originally posted by Nuclear:
We had the DC-10 flying fire suppression over our neighborhood during the 2nd wildfire in our town this summer, and people have videos of it flying down into the low areas then pulling up over the hills, passing at a very low altitude crossing over the main drag through town. Flying a jetliner like it was a crop-duster! Amazing stuff.

How difficult is that maneuver for a pilot?

Large air tankers use a minimum drop height of 400' over the fuels or terrain. The VLATs (DC-10 and 747) have higher drops, depending on coverage level, wind, etc.

Flying low in terrain isn't a matter of difficulty; it's a matter of judgement.

When the DC-10 first started flying fires, they came back with a damaged leading edge on one wing and pieces of a tree stuck in the slats. Bad judgement, no experience. Today, they do very well, but it was a steep learning curve for guys with no experience or background, and for a number of years, they could only use a dedicated leadplane, for DC-10 drops. Today, they fit into the mix like everyone else.

Doing drops in a large tanker is about energy management and staying ahead of the airplane. Doing drops in a small tanker, too. Like the saying goes: don't let the airplane go anywhere that your mind hasn't already been.

quote:

Originally posted by Keystoner:
How difficult is that maneuver for a pilot?

The maneuver isn’t particularly difficult, but the margin for error is not particularly large. Additionally, very few ever get the chance to screw up more than once.

The larger the aircraft, the more inertia. Not only is it harder to change directions quickly, those wingtips are sticking out a long ways. One missed obstacle could end a pilot’s career very quickly.

Add the fact that while turbofan engines spool up more quickly than (now rarely seen) pure turbojet engines, they are still slower to spool up than one might like.

I’m sure there are exceptions, but in most all of the Fire work I’ve seen, passes are made downhill. If one needs to lay a line down a steep canyon, they don’t start at the bottom of the canyon and head up, they start at the top and head down. Just like search and rescue operations, if you have to operate near terrain you want to as much as possible make your pass so that the terrain falls away from you, not rises in front of you.

Terrain flying follows the water principle: water flows downhill, and so do you.

FWIW, due to boredom at home I spend some time every day looking at ADSBExchange dot com and I recently found several planes seemingly flying to various military bases. A search of the FAA N number indicates they are owned by Neptune Aviation dot com.

Their website says they are an aerial firefighting company.

IIRC they have multiple BAe146 planes and at least one DC10, these I have noticed on ADSB.

I assume they do indeed fight fires but they sure do seem to run all over the western part of the US where there do not seem to be fires at the moment.

Their ID on ADSB is usually TNKRxx, tail numbers are shown, easy to look up who they are, and that's the only reason I noticed and remembered them because Tinker AFB is local to me, and that's just a coincidence.

Neptune is a tanker company. They do not have a DC-10; the DC-10's are all Tanker 10 LLC.

Neptune retired their last P2V Neptune two years ago (which is what they were known for, and their name sake), and are flying only the BAE-146 now. Aeroflite is the other company flying the BAE-146, but in a different tank configuration and are designated as RJ-85's. Aeroflite also flies water-scoopers, CL-415's (and CL-215T's).

TNKR means Tanker, and is the callsign. Each tanker callsign is the word Tanker followed by the assigned tanker number.

Neptune only goes to military bases where tanker bases are established (eg, Ft. Huachuca, Hill AFB, Mountain Home, Kirtland, etc). Most tanker bases are not co-located with military facilities.

In 2002, when the large air tanker community was shut down following the inflight breakup of two tankers over fires, Neptune was the second largest operator, after Hawkins and Powers. H&P went out of business. Aero Union sold and then was closed a few years later, Minden lost their last airplane and went out of business, and Aeroflite ad Neptune remained. The other main operators TBM and Butler Aviation, merged and then sold out to Erikson Skycrane, which now operates the MD-87 tankers. Aeroflite operates the RJ85's, and Neptune the BAE-146's.

An investor bought what was left of Aero Union, which operated P-3's, and has rebranded as Airstrike, with several P-3's back in service. Coulson, which operated the last of the Martin Mars, is contracting C-130Q's and the most recent tanker conversion, the B-737.

Outside of that, it's the DC-10's and the single B747.

The bulk of the tanker fleet, approximately double the large air tanker fleet, are single engine tankers (SEATs), now almost exclusively 1 or 2-seat Air Tractor 802's (type IV tankers, 800 gallons). SEATs do use the same tanker bases as large air tankers, but also travel with their own assigned truck and mix rig, and can set up nearly anywhere, to stage near a fire. The trucks can establish a temporary tanker base at small airports, and used to do it road-side in some cases

Two SEATs were involved in a mid-air collision as they exited the drop on the Bishop fire in southern Nevada, a couple of weeks ago.

^^^^^^^^ Interesting and informative. Thanks