"Jon Anderson" wrote in message
...
Dave Kearton wrote:

For the last 10-15 years there have been fairly loud and regular calls
for a brace of Canadair CL-415s to be based in Australia - from everybody
except the fire services, who seem to be happy with the fleet of leased
agricultural aircraft.

Those Air Tractors are certainly better than nothing, but I'm surprised to
learn larger aircraft are not much more common. Maybe things will start to
change soon.


Jon




Well, if they do, it'll be a purely political requirement, not an
operational one.

This year's "trial" of the DC-10 aircraft is rumoured to have cost $10m -
and that's just for our smallest mainland state.


I'd be happy to pay for it if the fire services were asking for them, but
they're not. The push seems to be from uninvolved rednecks on talk-back
radio.



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Cheers

Dave Kearton