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

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.

Wow, that's a lot of money for a trial...
Maybe I don't understand the situation down there. I live in the Sierra
Nevada Mountains, near Lake Tahoe. Area is blanketed with oak, madrone,
and evergreens such as pine and fir. Air bases are scattered and there's
really no place for planes to reload outside of the air bases. Lots of
ponds and lakes for helicopters though.


A common rhetoric on the talkback shows seems to be "if it works in America,
we should do it here.....Greece has 10 of them (CL-415s) and we have
none..."

I wonder how many of these callers are related to people who will benefit
from buying, leasing & operating these planes, or maybe I'm just being
cynical.

Large airports are _generally_on the coast, large fires can be inland.
Large bodies of water are few and unavailable to sea-skimming water bombers.
The water authorities are unenthusiastic about the risk of contaminating our
water supply in the unlikely crash of a water scooping plane on a dam or
river.

We had trials of a modular C-130 system about 20 years ago. Given the
required infrastructure for storage of retardant, water and pumping
equipment and trained ground crew, these large aircraft can't be based
ad-hoc at the nearest airport, but need to be operated from "permanent"
bases. During the trials in NSW and Victoria, this resulted in a
turnaround time from one of 3 widely dispersed airports/airbases to a
nominal fire location, from the nearest base in a 'dump-return-dump again'
situation was 1 and a half to 2 hours - and that's just for a single fire..


Victoria's killer fires last year featured 4 or 5 fire fronts on the same
day. Even then, it's not uncommon to have more than one state with
life-threatening fires at the same time during each summer season - so a
single large plane isn't the obvious solution.







Perhaps the lower load of the Air Tractor is offset by being able to turn
around a lot faster? Are they able to be serviced from suitable roads?
That would sure change the game. I was just thinking of the small load vs
long distances to travel...



The most popular aircraft with the fire crews (from what I hear - I have NO
connection to the issue) is the Erikson Air-Crane. It can dump 10,000L
per sortie and because it's a helo, it can operate close to the fire front,
with very short turnaround times (for a 10,000L aircraft). The hourly
costs are probably fairly steep, but it seems to be enthusiastically
supported
by its customers.

The air tractors and smaller heloes with buckets are a practical solution
for us.


A jet Ranger with a bucket can drop 900L on top of a fire, refill from a
farm dam or roadside tanker and do it again in 5 minutes.

The smaller crop dusters generally take 1,800L, the larger ones about 3,000L
and can land on a roadside or open field, refill from tankers, farm supplies
or roadside tanker refill stations that are built into the rural water
supply system. Turnaround times for these planes are still around 10
minutes or so, depending on how close they're based.

These smaller planes can operate in windier conditions and can drop the
retardant from lower altitudes, with higher accuracy and less wastage or
dispersion, than the really large aircraft.



I don't want to keep coming back to the money, because it's mostly about
saving lives and property, but if you bring in a bunch of big planes for the
season, you've just defined an operating budget of several million dollars.

With that money, you can lease a large fleet of local planes and crews in
their agricultural off-season, that don't have to be flown in from overseas
(with huge transit costs). They can operate at short notice on many
concurrent fire fronts. They're flexible and work hand in glove with
the local fire commanders, using their ground resources and can be quickly
redeployed as priorities dictate. A number of available planes can
dump the same amount of retardant closer to the fires, over a longer period
for less money.


Nobody wants to admit they're looking at the meter, but it _always_ comes
down to cost. The only problem with these small planes is that
they're not sexy like the Air-cranes or the 747 tankers, so they have no
appeal to the general public, only the poor punter on the ground with a hose
in his hand.






Locally we have 2 S2's with turbines, a helicopter, and an OV-10 spotter.
I'm only about 3 miles from the airbase, which is comforting! I have seen
what I think is a DC-6 and a C-130 fighting nearby fires. Actually what I
think is the DC-6, I got a REAL good look at, as he came up out of a
canyon and crossed the ridge I was on maybe 1.5x his wingspan above the
trees. Man I wish I had a camera with me, I could see the pilot looking
down at me...


Jon



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Cheers

Dave Kearton