Fire Bombers
 

There are CL415 Water Bombers sitting on the ground in the winter off-season all over southern Europe right now.

Why on earth cant our government arrange an exchange of hemispheres for these aircraft with the seasons?

Alternatively in RAAF or RAN service or equally in Surveillance and Rescue.

Yes, I know that it was attempted some years ago for profit, but lets forget about that and look at the real costs of the few recent bushfire seasons and things possibly getting hotter and drier?

It's not the profit angle, it's the lack of suitable areas to pick up water in Australia. Not many lakes in the Blue Mountains or anywhere in the Great Dividing Range where many fires are.

Warragamba Dam and the Pacifc Ocean don't count? Or is saltwater a non starter?

Not to mention the lakes on the central coast, which in WWII had flying boats operating off them.

Canadair did a study on this back in the 80s.
See this post.
http://www.pprune.org/australia-new-...ml#post8116228

Approx 5nm SW of Lithgow is Lake Lyall. I don't know if it and the surrounding terrain would allow aviation fire-fighting but I'd be quite confident that the relevant authorities would have had it examined.

I didnt realise that there were others talking about this very topic on the other firefighting thread. Others had picked up on this before I and have made very good points there.

I only opened this thread because I passed through a European airport the other day and saw 6 CL415s sitting idle on the ground while NSW was engulfed in flames with no respite in sight.

I thought it is yet another national embarrassment (along the lines of my pet grievances of everything is for profit in Australia, public infrastructure in private or banks hands and the banal beauracracy of aviation that is driving us to the wall) that we had nothing similar given the environment we live in and the future direction of weather problems.

A lack of suitable water bodies with respect is a red herring - these aircraft are amphibious and could eaily be refilled still reasonable quickly on the ground by water tankers which are cleverly deployed.

What is lacking is the fortitude and strength of leadership in our country.

We need a strong purpose built aircraft, not some old hacks that put people at unfair risk.


It should not be a question of operation for profit, and there should be no question of CASA placing banal beauracratic hurdles or reinventing the wheel.

It should be a case of: Others do it successfully, lets make it happen here too for the benefit of the people.

Forget they're float planes. Plenty of airstrips and tankers to fill them up...

Quite a number of civil Spanish firebombers go to Chile in the winter the rest just go for maintenance and storage.

I would check it over the next weekend, but I am fairly sure that Greek CL (both 215 & 415) are down for maintenance during winter months.

And I also thing about the issues about terrain familiarity and for the CL-215 I doubt they can do the trip without some heavy maintenance in the middle of it.


Rwy in Sight

Well then, what about a couple of these based, say at Richmond or Canberra, where they could do the whole of the J Curve in a couple of hours.





Its about time they got serious about fire fighting and aviation in Australia

A friend of mine drives CL215's and they've ferried them from Canada to Turkey and back. There is a conversion of the CL215 to CL215T replacing the radials with turbines.

Typical here however, the emergency will be over and the pollies/bureaucrats all go back to sleep until the next one.

If you have a look at the places recently where we've had significant loss of property and/or life, there has always been water relatively close by- close enough for a CL type option to be quite viable. Lake Eildon wasn't that far from the Victorian bush fires, Warragamba for the Blue Mountains fires, lots of lakes for the central coast fires, Lake Burley Griffin for the Canberra fires although there may be a question there over depth?

Even if they take 30 minutes to do a round trip from the fire front to the water supply, the amount of water they can put on the fire is enough to alter fire behaviour. In many cases they will alter fire behaviour more in one drop than a helicopter will flying multiple smaller drops but with more water over the same time frame.

When you then have 2-3 (or more) of these things working in concert, it can be a very significant force multiplier.

Evergreen don't say anything about filling the 747, but it seems to imply that it fills on the runway. The requirement for a 2500m runway is slightly restrictive, but with a 747 cruise speed it should be feasible to run out of capital city or military airports. They say it holds 78,000 litres. I think that might be equivalent to 23 Dromader flights. I can imagine the logistics of filling rapidly might be complex. That might be 3 semi-trailer tankers on the ground and they seem to add retardant chemicals.

On the other hand, it can basically get here from the US overnight.

bigger/heavier aircraft can more easily operate in higher wind conditions. The Firecats [modified S-2] and older B-26's etc had better crosswind limits for a start when AT's are effectively grounded.

I guess what works is a combo of heavy and lighter fixed and rotary wing machines. The mindset in OZ is one or the other....reality is both!

AT's were working last week in 50 knots plus, load is similar with both old twins mentioned to an 802.

Re RAAF participation in the recent bushfire problem - this is the RAAF magazine 'Airforce', article....

Defence Newspapers | Air Force

Cheers:ok:

50 knots crosswind? :eek:

Firecats
 

Meanwhile, we retired 16 S-2s in the 1980's and left them to rot. Now they've been purchased by a foreign company for, I am led to believe, conversion to Firecats... aren't we such a smart country..?

Now, cue all the vested-intrest operators and blinkered senior fire staff telling us why they can single handedly save the world with a bunch of Air Tractors :rolleyes:

Vested interest? You are looking at least 3 million per aircraft for conversion without any work on airframe corrosion/AD updates. Have you seen the Trackers in the last couple of years? They are being sold for scrap not as going aircraft. A Firecat has a similar load to 802's, can't operate on anything apart from tar runways and has well over twice the operating cost. Trojan, you going to donate the 20 or 25 million required to convert and get airworthy half a dozen aircraft?