Avro Lancaster

Lancaster fire bomber - Steve Cox

Originally built in Canada in 1945 as a Mk. X bomber, it arrived in the UK too late for WWII combat.

From Steve Cox Aviation Artist:

In 1970, this ex RCAF Mk 10 Avro Lancaster, built by Victory Aircraft at Malton Ontario, was converted to be the first and only Lancaster firebomber. The bomb bay doors were removed, and four slurry tanks were installed in the fuselage. After a series of successful flight tests, the aircraft flew missions during a wildfire in 1971 at the Wood Buffalo National Park. 

 

 

Martin Mars Water Bomber

MARTIN Mars (C-FLYL)

Wildfire season is in full swing. I haven't seen or smelled any smoke this year, but that could change.

This airplane won't be fighting any fires, it's a zillion years old and is being retired. Previous post about this airplane here.

Fire Boss to the Rescue

AIR TRACTOR Fire Boss scooping up water from the Willamette River to fight the Liberty Fire.

The Liberty Fire wasn't a big one. It burned 25 to 100 acres last month near Salem, Oregon.

If It ain't the Russians, it's Mother Nature

AT-802F Fire Bosses at Ladd Army Airfield in Fairbanks, Alaska, July 4, 2022 - Scott Raymond/U.S. Forest Service

It's forest fire season in Alaska and it's shaping up to be a bad one. The smoke is so bad in Fairbanks (see orange sun in above photo) that aircraft are often grounded.

Coulson Gets Around

Coulson Water Bomber in Australia - Jarrod Swanwick

Coulson is based in British Columbia, Canada. A C-130 Hercules has a range of about 2,000 miles. Australia is about 10,000 miles away, all over water, so I was wondering what route they took to get there. I mean there is more than one way to skin a cat (where did that expression come from anyway?), see this post and this video. I suppose they could have carried extra fuel in the cargo bay, but I don't know if they would have been able to carry enough to fly non-stop the whole way. 

Besides having a zillion aircraft photos, FlightAware also has flight logs for every aircraft in existence, so I thought I'd check. That log shows that this aircraft has been in Chile for at least the last month. So Coulson gets around.

Erickson Skycrane - Jarrod Swanwick

This photo was also in this weeks batch from FlightAware. Also from Australia by the same photographer. The Skycrane has appeared here a couple of times.

Wikipedia has a page about the Skycrane and the CH-54 Tarhe, the military version.

Martin Mars

Hawaii Mars

Martin JRM Mars flying boats were developed during WW2 as cargo planes for the Navy. The JR in JRM is just a Navy code for Utility-Transport Aircraft, so JRM just means JR - Mars. Only seven were made. The six production aircraft were all named after Pacific Ocean island chains. The Navy retired them in 1956. Coulson still has two of them at their base on Vancouver Island, 80 miles due west of the city of Vancouver.

The Martin Mars air tankers make their home at Sproat Lake - Mike Youds

The Martin Mars Hawaii drops its load of water - Coulson Company

Coulson Mars FLying Boats at their base on Sproat Lake 
Port Alberni, British Columbia, Canada - 2009 - John Allan

Sproat Lake, the seaplane base and the Port Alberni Airport

The Martin Mars is a very large airplane. Just how big is it? Here's a comparison with a couple others from the same era:

Comparison of Martin Mars, Convair Peacemaker & Spruce Goose
(that little triangle in the lower left corner is part of the Hindenburg)

DC-10 Bombs Lava Fire

McDonnell Douglas DC-10 Water Bomber
Departing Medford for the Lava Fire burning near Mt Shasta.

Fire season is picking up.

The map shows heat on the Lava Fire detected by satellites.
The red dots were detected at 2:54 p.m. PDT June 29, 2021.

We seem to have a new technique for measuring wildfire. dailytimewaster will be interested.

747 Global SuperTanker

747 Global SuperTanker

What a great photo! Just look at that airplane, all bright red, white & shiny! Unfortunately, fire fighting is a marginal business and the company operating this airplane has shut down. If someone else doesn't step up it may headed to the boneyard.

How do you scrap an old Boeing 747 aeroplane
quickpremiernews

In the video, Mark says they removed 150 tons of equipment and are left with 100 tons of aircraft. Wikipedia shows a range of weights depending on model, but all around 200 tons. Passenger load might be 35 tons and fuel load would be 200 tons.

Airplane of the Day - Air Tractor AT-802 Fire Boss

Air Tractor AT-802 Fire Boss In ACTION on Vaseux Lake
VMC Aviation Videos
A new job for the Air Tractor: fighting forest fires. The Air Tractor is a crop duster. This video is a little long and somewhat repetitive. It was recorded in British Columbia.



AT802 Fireboss Scooping Performance
Eder Navacerrada
This video has a different viewpoint and was shot in Portugal, Spain and Sweden.

Water bombers have appeared here before, but they were all larger aircraft.

Via AVGEEKERY.COM

I Smell Smoke Part Six

 

Erickson Aero Tanker's Tanker 60 - a 1958 Douglas DC-7B

Operating out of Redmond Oregon

Due to be retired this year

Same image without and with Auto White Balance

Bruce found an explanation about why my photo of the sky showed a yellow sun when it was obviously a red sun.

The Oregonian had a report in this morning's paper about why this years forest fires are so much worse than usual (yes, they are much worse) and what the powers that be are doing about it. The last paragraph is kind of telling.

“I thought the entire [Governor’s Council on Wildfire Response] engaged in good critical thinking,” Donegan said. “They were intellectually honest and took off their partisan hats. It was a big tent approach. Then you get to the legislative process and a lot of those more familiar battle lines reemerged. That was obviously very disappointing.”

 

I Smell Smoke Part Five

 

Water bomber loading up at Henry Hagg Lake, about 30 miles from here.

Washington County Sheriff's Office

Via Iaman

Cloud of smoke from California forest fire. 

Via commenter Bruce.

This is like the fifth day of yellow skies.

Paradise

Paradise California

I thought fire season was over. Guess not. Paradise was wiped out.

Flying over Paradise California
Notice the clear view of the ground on the screen

Picking up water to fight the Woolsey fire
Not Paradise, but still California

Zuma Beach is near Los Angeles. Paradise is in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Forest Fire in Croatia

Orebic, Croatia

Iaman is off gallivanting around Europe. He lands in Orebic, Croatia, a nice little vacation spot on an island in the Adriatic. And what happens? The local forest catches fire.


Orebic Croatia forest fire

Pic of the Day

1967 ERICKSON S64E Rotorcraft dropping during the Beaver creek fire in Blaine County Idaho summer 2013 with a firenado in the background - Loren Wood

Previous appearances of Skycrane here, here and here.

Flickr Video Test Post

California Air National Guard MAFFS Crew Drops on Day Fire Near Redding
I've been looking at aerial tankers, used for fighting forest fires, and I came across this video. Does it really do any good to have a pleasant robot voice continually warning you that you are too close to the ground? ('Altitude, Altitude, Altitude'). And isn't that high pitched squeal of warning buzzer really annoying? Just another reason to not venture out of my cave.
    I had to change a setting in order to watch this video on my Chromebook. See the whole gruesome story here. 

Update January 2019 replaced problematic video with a copy I made. Original video here.

Aerial Firefighting, California

Conflux of pics crossed my screen, so I thought I'd share. Click to embiggenate.

A BAe-146 jet aerial tanker drops its load of fire retardant on a fire near Pollack Pines, Calif., Monday, Sept. 15, 2014. The fire, which started Sunday has consumed more than 3,000 acres and forced the evacuation of dozens of homes.(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

A firefighting helicopter makes a drop on a wildfire in Silverado Canyon in eastern Orange County, Calif. on Friday, Sept. 12, 2014. (AP Photo/Orange County Register, Mark Rightmire)

Dropping retardent over Weed, Ca. Via Posthip Scott.

Forest Fires

Forest Fire Season is in full swing. Scott sent me this clip taken from the cockpit of a water bomber as they are making a drop. See all those clouds along the left hand side? They aren't clouds, Bucky.
    Jack tried to drive to Missoula Montana this weekend but couldn't get through because of a fire. First the fire had closed the highway, then he needed gas and the fire had cut off the electric power to the nearby gas station, so getting gas meant backtracking 85 miles. He could have gotten through but it would have meant going 300 miles out his way.

He did get to see Goliath, the giant Sikorsky Skycrane, sucking up water out of a creek.

Looking around for more info I came across Global Incident Map dot com, which lets you choose from a dozen different kinds of disasters to plot for your amusement. Some of them only cover the USA while others are in fact Global. Here's a portion of the Forest Fire Map. As you can see, except for one in Eastern Canada, they are all in the West.

Every year we have a boat load of forest fires, and every year our fire fighting resources are strained to the limit. You can be pretty sure that forest fires have been happening all along and that our attempts to fight them is a recent development. I mean we weren't fighting them before we were here. Some fires might be started by humans, but most are started by lightning. We aren't helping matters by fighting fires. All that does is preserve fuel so the next fire can be even bigger. This seems like a fairly straight forward problem. Why are we continuing to have so much trouble with it? Congressman DeFazio from Southwestern Oregon has a few choice words in a story in The Coos Bay World.

Water Bomber 00

That is Water Bomber number zero zero. Who are these guys who design these fonts where the number zero looks like the letter o? They deserve to be splattered with ink.

There was a picture of a water bomber dropping a load of fire retardant in the paper today. The aircraft appears to be similar to a C-130 Hercules. It has four turboprop engines and is land based, but the wing is a low wing, not a high wing like the Hercules. It is not a flying boat.

This photo accompanied an article about the wildfires in California. The picture was striking for several reasons. The plane is flying at very low altitude, very close to a house, and you can see the individual propeller blades. I don't think I have ever seen a picture of an airplane with the engine running where you could see the individual propellar blades like this. Usually the prop is turning so fast that the blades are just a blur. Could this be an artifact of digital photography? It is so striking that I thought perhaps it was photo-shopped. I looked on the newspapers site, but I could not find the photo. I did find some similar photos on the web.

This one is similar in many respects including the markings on the airplane. The difference here is that this plane only has two engines, is steeply banked and appears to be flying into the ground.

This plane has four engines and you can see the blades, but it is a flying boat.

Update November 2019 replaced missing picture.