Originally Posted by
Gordy
Nope, Cal-Fire has two of them on contract, one operated by Capitol Helicopters, I gave one of their pilots his 135 ride earlier this year. It is based at McClellan Field, (main aviation base of Cal-Fire). He used to work for me at Redding Air Service on our fire contracts before moving to Capitol.
Also one of the Coulson S-76 pilots used to work for me flying our S-76's before leaving to go work for them.
See this articel here...scroll down almost to the end:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources...a-d79c0ff994c3
I was on fires with both the Capitol and PJ 429s. They use NVGs for night HLCO missions but do not have thermal imaging systems. Those cameras are only installed on the two Helicopter Express 407s that are being used by the USFS.
We also rarely hover over the fire during HLCO missions as the article states, we fly orbits to extend our time on scene.