Pompiers airframes south of France.
 

Watching two small aircraft making continuous sorties to the local fires. They look a bit like Pawnees but turbines. They may be bombing fires I've seen the Canadairs but these are really GA sized. Anyone have an idea as to what they are please?

Air controllers or some kind of pathfinder maybe? Saw some in northern Spain last week.

The sorties are very direct. When we first saw them they looked like spotting sorties but now they are much more lime bombing runs. Fairly sure that they are configured like crop sprayers. Defoe in Pompeii livery.

They are probably Ayres Turbo Thrush's if they are bright yellow. I see them flying around Cap D'Agde in south France.

If they are yellow, I think they are Thrush 710's (based on the old Rockwell Ag Commander design) which, holding about 2000 litres, are used for spotting and smaller stubble fires in that region. Having said that, I'm pretty sure I saw something similar being used by the Pompiers about two years ago near Royan.

Thank you both, John Ball, that is exactly where I am.

In fact you will also see big piston radial engine yellow crop sprayers wizzing over fields in-between the Cap and Sete spraying fields. We often hear them in the morning and watch them out of the window as we eat breakfast.
'''Nothing better than the noise of a big radial engine in the morning'''

I'm a bit inland from you north of Beziers. One of the fires was over the hill from me. Everything is a bit small scale here so no areal spraying, apart from flame retardant I guess.

Effortless,

Off at a bit of a tangent --- last summer I based my VANS RV6 in the Bezier hangar for two weeks while we toured around including to Spain.

Do you know any private strips near the Cap other than the one at Serignan with the banner towers. Pity Pezenas has closed.

During the ongoing drought and related serious fire risk here, at least one, and sometimes two Conair Firecats have been circling overhead for large parts of the day. They act as spotters/first responders and get some water down while waiting for the Canadairs to arrive.

At the beginning of Aug all the Canadairs were grounded for inspection after the undercarriage of one collapsed. I believe they are all now operational.

Landing gear failure grounds CL-415 air tankers in France ? Fire Aviation

Sorry John I'm out of the loop now. I'm going to visit someone in Pezenas tomorrow. He still flies ULM. I'll ask him. Last place I ever flew from was from a patch of gravel in Laroquebrussane. A bit further over.