Canadian Forces cast about for used Hercules airframes

They are two different aircraft that would be best in two different
environments. In big wide open areas with lots of lakes, like much of
southern
Canada, and Minnesota, those scoopers are great.

Poor Ron, makes a false premise and then expands into more ignorance.

Well, he sounds a lot less ignorant than the Tarvernaut. How many
CL-415's have been sold in the western US?

I know of no US orders resulting from the grounding of those two large types of
tankers (C-130A, or PBY4-2). Hawkins and Powers lost both of those aircraft
last year, and I certainly have not heard of them preparing to order a CL-415,
nor have I heard about Neptune, Aero Union, ARDCO or International Air Response
preparing to order any. I am not sure they could even afford them to buy them
if they wanted to.

The excess need is being taken up with SEATS...not Bombardiers..

But in the weste n states, the scoopers would not be near as useful.
Alpine
lakes surrounded by mountain peaks at around 10,000 MSL are not very good
places to be trying to scoop water, especially during a summer day.

Get back with us afeter you purchase a vowel, Ron.

Guess the concept of a goodly chunk of the area in our western states
not being all that compatable with fixed wing scoop operations is
beyond the Tarvernaut as well; but then again, if he can invent a
"recoiless" M102 for the AC-130, I guess it is pretty easy for him to
declare that scoop operations in those mountain lakes is a piece of
cake...

Brooks

Sigh....well at least Brooks sees my point. There is an OCCASIONAL fire in the
southwest that might have a large enough body of water nearby for a CL-415, but
its certainly not enough to begin basing CL-415s in the desert, even if John
Tarver thinks it is a good idea. Dont expect to see new Bombardier scooper
tankers at Winslow, Sierra Vista, Prescott, Pueblo, Albuquerque, or Alamogordo
tanker bases any time soon.

The bodies of water in the SW that might be near a fire, are far better served
by Helos such as Sikorski/Erickson Skycranes and S-60 firehawks..than CL-415s.
I saw some of those S-60 Firehawks in Missoula last month, and they are quite
impressive in their capabilities. Erickson is building new Skycranes, since
they have all the type certificates from Sikorsky now too.

The fire the C-130A was lost on, was the Cannon Fire in California, which might
help those doing a websearch for the file. There are also photos of the PB4Y-2
that were taken at the moment it had structural failure also..It was shortly
afterwards in Colorado that it happened.
Apparently the USAF had some similar failures on their C-130As too




Ron
Tucson AZ
C-421 air ambulance