NSW burns but where is the 737?
https://www.boeing.com/news/frontier...st/i_ids4.html
Shame we don’t use this system, excellent real world training/currency for our RAAFies.
Shame we don’t use this system, excellent real world training/currency for our RAAFies.
ISTR Ronny did have a MAFF system for their early Herc's but didn't proceed with it after some trials. I'm sure I saw what remained of the system when I was at Richmond many moons ago.
Anyone have the full story on it?
Anyone have the full story on it?
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The RAAF C130 & C17 fleet is already stretched for frames and pilots with existing tasking. Ignoring the aircraft retrofit, people seem to think that RAAF pilots can just start doing firefighting ops overnight with their current skill sets. LOTS more specialised training required, and the risk level goes through the roof for a small seasonal requirement. Just look at the RJ85 firebomber video where they almost clipped that ridge a couple months ago. Leave the large firebombing work to the experts who train and do it operationally ALL year round travelling around the globe.
As a side note, I am not a helicopter pilot but I would have thought a much more easy transfer of Military flying skills would be using Army choppers with Bambi buckets, and this requires very little aircraft modifications. Surely that skill set is very close to winching ops, etc and the risk is lower than a large fixed wing aircraft that have less manoeuvre potential? Open to feedback from mil chopper guys....
As a side note, I am not a helicopter pilot but I would have thought a much more easy transfer of Military flying skills would be using Army choppers with Bambi buckets, and this requires very little aircraft modifications. Surely that skill set is very close to winching ops, etc and the risk is lower than a large fixed wing aircraft that have less manoeuvre potential? Open to feedback from mil chopper guys....
For the lazy person asking where it is https://www.flightradar24.com/N138CG/23171cdc
its bird dog
https://www.flightradar24.com/BDOG376/2317050f
C-130
https://www.flightradar24.com/C130/23171a7a
its bird dog
https://www.flightradar24.com/BDOG376/2317050f
C-130
https://www.flightradar24.com/C130/23171a7a
Busy in the America's. We've offered heavy air tankers from Canada and USA but no takers. These aircraft are now surrounded by snow..
For those advocating more aircraft, a good read can be had here of issues with their effectiveness
https://volunteerfirefighters.org.au...-magic-bullets
What rubbish, we took a VLAT as soon as it’s available in the form of a DC10 that has been working daily since it got here. Taking any more is not practical as we don’t have the crews or craft to support a larger fleet. With the herc, Avros and the 737 and DC10 it’s a capable fleet (including the seven Vlats/lats, upped from 5 originally
Not rubbish my friend. The aircraft come with crews by the way. The DC-10 air tanker had been booked. I can tell you that a couple of other air tanker companies in Canada and the US have offered 146/L188/CL215 air tankers that are ready now.
Queensland has no large tankers at all!
Not rubbish my friend. The aircraft come with crews by the way. The DC-10 air tanker had been booked. I can tell you that a couple of other air tanker companies in Canada and the US have offered 146/L188/CL215 air tankers that are ready now.
Queensland has no large tankers at all!
Not rubbish my friend. The aircraft come with crews by the way. The DC-10 air tanker had been booked. I can tell you that a couple of other air tanker companies in Canada and the US have offered 146/L188/CL215 air tankers that are ready now.
Queensland has no large tankers at all!
Queensland has no large tankers at all!
Ownership will be important in future seasons as the fire season expands both here and over the equator, but it’s irrelvent when assets are in country.And yes aircraft come with crews, but not supporting crews on the ground or FACs, there are no FACS available to support additional LAT ops full stop. And as per the linked article, getting more will add cost solve little, as the CSIRO study proved. Why do you think aircraft have been returning to Richmond when there was a perfectly capable airport not far away in the case of the south coast ops last week, crewing on ground, or the lack of it.
NAFC is a national body, not state based and assets are tasked according to need not ownership, which is why LATs have been working in Queensland amongst other places
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So we are being told that there are more larger fire fighting aircraft available from Canada and USA, but we don't need them?
Judging from the aircraft mentioned in the above post,we are talking about offers from Airspray and Conair who have successfully worked in Australia over many years.
All this when a senior NSW Govt Minister admits that they had been warned about the problems we now have and our woefully under resourced RFS/NPWF and NSWF&R are totally overwhelmed by the current workload.Government seems to have no short term solution to handle a predominately volunteer fire fighting force who on top of fighting fires has to still carry our their day jobs to put food on the table.
Compare this to CAL Fire who have 13 pre prepared airbases, 23 S2Ts and 14 Broncos that they own and numerous other aircraft on hire. We let our fleet of Trackers rot away in Sale until they were scrapped 20 years later.
Cal Fire also have just obtained 7 x C130s for conversion. What did we do with our C130Hs? We gave them away to the Indonesians.
We also sold off our Orions which also seem to make a pretty good fire fighting aircraft.
I suppose that we deserve the Government that we have who seem to know the cost of everything but the value of nothing , but I'm not sure that my grandchildren did anything to deserve this ?
Wunwing
Judging from the aircraft mentioned in the above post,we are talking about offers from Airspray and Conair who have successfully worked in Australia over many years.
All this when a senior NSW Govt Minister admits that they had been warned about the problems we now have and our woefully under resourced RFS/NPWF and NSWF&R are totally overwhelmed by the current workload.Government seems to have no short term solution to handle a predominately volunteer fire fighting force who on top of fighting fires has to still carry our their day jobs to put food on the table.
Compare this to CAL Fire who have 13 pre prepared airbases, 23 S2Ts and 14 Broncos that they own and numerous other aircraft on hire. We let our fleet of Trackers rot away in Sale until they were scrapped 20 years later.
Cal Fire also have just obtained 7 x C130s for conversion. What did we do with our C130Hs? We gave them away to the Indonesians.
We also sold off our Orions which also seem to make a pretty good fire fighting aircraft.
I suppose that we deserve the Government that we have who seem to know the cost of everything but the value of nothing , but I'm not sure that my grandchildren did anything to deserve this ?
Wunwing
No politician ever wants to say no to 'our brave firefighters'; thus over the years the NSW RFS has become top-heavy with a bunch of Sydney good ol' boys, whose main interest is empire-building. The rural volunteers who actually fight fires are second class citizens to the Capos from Homebush.
They certainly make good TV though.
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I am not saying that the Trackers would be what we would convert today but unless Conair, Civile and Securite and Calfire have been wasting their money and time with them over the last 40 years they seem to have been a good platform.
As far as volunteers coming off the fire front and then working, that seems to be the story that I'm hearing from my locals. How else do you run your business when you have contract and job obligations? The bank doesn't just cancel your mortgage for the fire season?
Wunwing
As far as volunteers coming off the fire front and then working, that seems to be the story that I'm hearing from my locals. How else do you run your business when you have contract and job obligations? The bank doesn't just cancel your mortgage for the fire season?
Wunwing
I am not saying that the Trackers would be what we would convert today but unless Conair, Civile and Securite and Calfire have been wasting their money and time with them over the last 40 years they seem to have been a good platform.
As far as volunteers coming off the fire front and then working, that seems to be the story that I'm hearing from my locals. How else do you run your business when you have contract and job obligations? The bank doesn't just cancel your mortgage for the fire season?
Wunwing
As far as volunteers coming off the fire front and then working, that seems to be the story that I'm hearing from my locals. How else do you run your business when you have contract and job obligations? The bank doesn't just cancel your mortgage for the fire season?
Wunwing
VLATs are undoubtedly useful but IMHO vastly oversold for politics (RFS/Government) and profits (some people make a LOT of money out of this, and not just the pilots/owners).
As for the volunteers continuing working their day jobs whilst firefighting at night; not in my experience, your locals may be different.
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Most volunteers that I know are "tradies". Their contracts don't just go away because they are volunteering. Same with the farmers. Cows still have to be looked after.It must be particularly galling when the NSWF&R and NP firies and the RFS white shirted supervisors are being paid and you have to go home and earn money.
As far as the large air tankers are concerned, it seems they are particularly good at knocking down fires to a manageable situation in the early stages. At least that how it works outside Australia. As I said in an earlier post, US,,Canada and Europe seems to see it that way and have for over 50 years. I watched the disastrous Springwood fire in its earlier stage from my parents village. The RFS never even had a chance with vehicles as the single road soon turned to gridlock, as did the Great Western Highway. The helicopter attack that day never even touched the sides. However having later watched the DC10 at the Maddon's Plain fire, its obvious to me that a couple of DC10s would have stopped the early Springwood fire in it's tracks, at least to a level that the ground attack would have been successful when they eventually managed to get there.
Maybe if we had converted our Neptunes in the 60s we would have a better working understanding of how to use them large aircraft now?
As far as our Lancasters and Halifaxes, I think that you will find that Australia never owned any in the first place.
Wunwing.
As far as the large air tankers are concerned, it seems they are particularly good at knocking down fires to a manageable situation in the early stages. At least that how it works outside Australia. As I said in an earlier post, US,,Canada and Europe seems to see it that way and have for over 50 years. I watched the disastrous Springwood fire in its earlier stage from my parents village. The RFS never even had a chance with vehicles as the single road soon turned to gridlock, as did the Great Western Highway. The helicopter attack that day never even touched the sides. However having later watched the DC10 at the Maddon's Plain fire, its obvious to me that a couple of DC10s would have stopped the early Springwood fire in it's tracks, at least to a level that the ground attack would have been successful when they eventually managed to get there.
Maybe if we had converted our Neptunes in the 60s we would have a better working understanding of how to use them large aircraft now?
As far as our Lancasters and Halifaxes, I think that you will find that Australia never owned any in the first place.
Wunwing.
Thee RFS trucks don't appear to have the personal protection systems that Victorian ones have, but apart from that, they seem to get a lot of work out of their trucks.. As far as I can tell, which is not much, the fire response in NSW has been managed very well. The NSW Government could perhaps throw quite a few million at new vehicles and facilities.
My main beef is that we need to adopt aboriginal burning practices and refrain from putting out "natural" fires in wilderness areas caused by lightening strikes because otherwise the fuel load builds up to the point where any fire is catastrophic. As a rule of thumb, all of it needs to be burned every five years or less to return the forests to the park - like state they were in at first settlement. This is a matter for Government policy, not the fire services.
To put that another way, the fuel load on the forest floor is going to burn sometime. You can have a holocaust of a fire every twenty years or a cool burn every five - your choice.
However all the above is personal opinion.
My main beef is that we need to adopt aboriginal burning practices and refrain from putting out "natural" fires in wilderness areas caused by lightening strikes because otherwise the fuel load builds up to the point where any fire is catastrophic. As a rule of thumb, all of it needs to be burned every five years or less to return the forests to the park - like state they were in at first settlement. This is a matter for Government policy, not the fire services.
To put that another way, the fuel load on the forest floor is going to burn sometime. You can have a holocaust of a fire every twenty years or a cool burn every five - your choice.
However all the above is personal opinion.
We’ve become too ‘Risk Averse’ (i.e. gutless), too bureaucratic, too willing to deny the fact that the bush WILL burn and that occasionally cuddly little koalas will die.
It’s only early December. If the drought continues I think the Fire season this year will be one for the books.
I used to live at Wentworth Falls (upper Blue Mountains). Houses built down steep hillsides, surrounded by eucalypts, in very rugged terrain. If a fire got going there ....
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Thee RFS trucks don't appear to have the personal protection systems that Victorian ones have, but apart from that, they seem to get a lot of work out of their trucks.. As far as I can tell, which is not much, the fire response in NSW has been managed very well. The NSW Government could perhaps throw quite a few million at new vehicles and facilities.
It's got nothing to do with government policy, or "greenies" or any other such nonsense. Climate is getting hotter and dryer. The number of opportunities to conduct hazard reduction burns safely are growing fewer every year, and the manpower available to conduct those burns is also very finite. A lot of these places are also simply not accessible.
The average volunteer has a job and a family. Their annual leave will run out eventually, and while they're protected against reprisals from their employer for going off to fight fires, they don't get paid when their leave runs out. Strangely enough, the kids still want to eat and the bank still wants their mortgage payments every month whether there are bushfires or not.
Last edited by bankrunner; 11th Dec 2019 at 09:50.