Proposal for Canada and Australia to share water bombers

[teacher]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/somnia-1.5425580

[digits_]

interesting thought. but if all those planes are flying all year round, when will maintenance happen? on the ship?

[North Shore]

Where are they going to get the pilots from? Apparently, Conair already has difficulty crewing their tankers in Australia in the winters. Yes, there might be some people who would work dual seasons, but one of the attractions of tankers is that you only work ~ 6 months, and have the rest of the year off.
That being siad, it might be more of a problem at our end - looking out the window at the snow right now, a contract in Aus would be awesome, especially if i could take my summer off here!

[digits_]

Not sure why they would need a boat though. For the cost of that boat, you should be able to ferry those planes back and forth lots of years.

[goingnowherefast]

interesting thought. but if all those planes are flying all year round, when will maintenance happen? on the ship?

Surely a Waterbomber doesn't need that much maintenance. Jazz flies their Dash 8s year round and with much higher utilization. Waterbombers have different systems, but I can't imagine it's that extreme. You'd need quite a few more mechanics so you can do 40hrs man-hours of maintenance in the 4 hour down time overnight and the plane is back available by sunrise.

If you want to double or triple the aircraft utilization, you'll need 3 or 4 times the manpower.

[Redneck_pilot86]

interesting thought. but if all those planes are flying all year round, when will maintenance happen? on the ship?

Surely a Waterbomber doesn't need that much maintenance. Jazz flies their Dash 8s year round and with much higher utilization. Waterbombers have different systems, but I can't imagine it's that extreme. You'd need quite a few more mechanics so you can do 40hrs man-hours of maintenance in the 4 hour down time overnight and the plane is back available by sunrise.

If you want to double or triple the aircraft utilization, you'll need 3 or 4 times the manpower.

Jazz wouldn't have near the cycles of a scooper, nor the time spent in turbulence.

[teacher]

[quote=goingnowherefast post_id=<a href="tel:1101066">1101066</a> time=<a href="tel:1579043628">1579043628</a> user_id=40868]
[quote=digits_ post_id=<a href="tel:1100922">1100922</a> time=<a href="tel:1579029272">1579029272</a> user_id=34065]
interesting thought. but if all those planes are flying all year round, when will maintenance happen? on the ship?

Surely a Waterbomber doesn't need that much maintenance. Jazz flies their Dash 8s year round and with much higher utilization. Waterbombers have different systems, but I can't imagine it's that extreme. You'd need quite a few more mechanics so you can do 40hrs man-hours of maintenance in the 4 hour down time overnight and the plane is back available by sunrise.

If you want to double or triple the aircraft utilization, you'll need 3 or 4 times the manpower.

[/quote]

Jazz wouldn't have near the cycles of a scooper, nor the time spent in turbulence.
[/quote]

But the scoopers are not pressurized like the DHC8s.

Not sure why they would need a boat though. For the cost of that boat, you should be able to ferry those planes back and forth lots of years.

The article said ferrying them would be costly, risky and logistically challenging considering they fly slow and would require many fuel stops in not ideal countries or open water. A container ship would probably be cheaper to send them all over together.

[digits_]

Some very average google fu numbers:
- cost of an average containership (note: not a custom designed ship to put waterbombers on): 100 million
- fuel burn of a containership: 250 ton of fuel per 24 hours (=1000 km travelled)
- service life of a ship: 30 years
- distance vancouver - sydney: 12500km
- fuel cost: 500 USD/ton

Let's say we use this setup for 30 years. we travel 25k km per year

- fuel burned per year: 250 ton/1000km * 25 000 km = 6250 ton, or in dollars: 3.125 million USD
- ship cost per year: 100 million / 30 => let's say another 3 million USD
This excludes crew, maintenance etc.

How many planes will fit on that ship? Probably no more than 6 if the drawing is somewhat accurate. That is 1 million dollars per waterbomber.

Can you ferry a waterbomber from vancouver to sydney for 500k USD?

[Daniel Cooper]

Until you lose one plane and you're out $37 million U.S. Those things are insanely expensive.

[Capt. Underpants]

The CL’s are not certified for known icing and those fat flying surfaces would be ice magnets. Good luck finding ice free conditions on those ferry flights.

[ahramin]

What a joke. Does anyone here really think you can't ferry a 415 to Australia and back? Borek used to ferry twin otters to the Maldives on a regular basis. Didn't Buffalo Joe ferry a few bombers to Turkey?

Fraser said the companies originally involved in the pitch in 2016 studied the logistics of flying water bombers between Canada and Australia and concluded it would be complicated, even perilous, to refuel the aircraft along the way in less-than-friendly nations.

And this is why consultants get paid high fees. To come up with complete horseshit that someone else can then say they got from a consultant. Use the planes year round, sure. If the seasons work out and you have the time for training.

Anyone suggesting it's easier to design and build a boat to carry them than it is to just fly them is either a complete idiot, or has a boat to sell you.

[Eric Janson]

You easily transport aircraft as deck cargo on a container ship in a similar way to how boats are transported. Just wrap the aircraft in plastic to protect it from the salt spray.

The bigger boats in this picture weigh a lot more than A CL-215.

[Heliian]

interesting thought. but if all those planes are flying all year round, when will maintenance happen? on the ship?

Surely a Waterbomber doesn't need that much maintenance. Jazz flies their Dash 8s year round and with much higher utilization. Waterbombers have different systems, but I can't imagine it's that extreme. You'd need quite a few more mechanics so you can do 40hrs man-hours of maintenance in the 4 hour down time overnight and the plane is back available by sunrise.

If you want to double or triple the aircraft utilization, you'll need 3 or 4 times the manpower.

You have got to be joking, or just a manager.

Throwing x amount of manpower at a project DOES NOT equate to x reduction in downtime.

Regardless, Australia should just buy their own, just like B.C. should but that would be too easy wouldn't it?

[rxl]

interesting thought. but if all those planes are flying all year round, when will maintenance happen? on the ship?

Surely a Waterbomber doesn't need that much maintenance. Jazz flies their Dash 8s year round and with much higher utilization. Waterbombers have different systems, but I can't imagine it's that extreme. You'd need quite a few more mechanics so you can do 40hrs man-hours of maintenance in the 4 hour down time overnight and the plane is back available by sunrise.

If you want to double or triple the aircraft utilization, you'll need 3 or 4 times the manpower.

Jazz wouldn't have near the cycles of a scooper, nor the time spent in turbulence.

I wouldn’t be so sure of that. Not to take anything whatever away from the very challenging work that the scoopers do, there’s a lot of old Classic Dash 8’s still in the Jazz fleet that have reliably done ten’s of thousands of cycles on flights like YVR-YYJ, YYZ-YXU or YHZ-YYG in all kinds of weather all year every year for 30+ years. Bombardier/Dehavilland builds TOUGH airplanes.

[valleyboy]

Italy has a large water bomber fleet. Why can't Australia just set up their own water bomber fleet. Seems like the most practical way to go. Even if they initially went to contract pilots. Someone is smoking the wild weed if they feel the logistics would not eventually bring them to their knees with an aircraft you can almost jog a fast in cruise. We think distances are vast here -- nothing like Australia. And a thought -- water bombers in the desert -- really -- They need high capacity fast land based bombers like a heavy jet.

[rigpiggy]

Well maybe they should buy a squadron or 2 for the RAAF and dual role them as coastwatch and civilian fire support........oh right because the commercial concerns would bitch about lost business.

[ahramin]

What is the cruise speed on a 415?

[Rowdy]

Jazz wouldn't have near the cycles of a scooper, nor the time spent in turbulence.

Most of the classic fleet is at or around 70,000hrs and similar number of cycles. Especially the ones that live out west doing multiple YCD's, YYJ's and YQQ's all day long. 365 days a year. The Tankers fly how much???? a few missions a summer?

Have you flown them here? I have. We spend most of our time in and out of mountain valleys into bumpy places like Terrace, Castelgar, Penticton, Kamloops etc all day long.

Bad comparison my friend.

As for the poster who talked about known icing on the ducks.. Ferrying is still cheaper than shipping them, even with a lengthy sit somewhere to wait out some ice.

[GyvAir]

Nobody's brought up Buffalo putting a 215 on a ship to Korea rather than ferrying it there. (as depicted on a couple Ice Pilots episodes) I wonder how that worked out for them in reality? Anyone know if they did that with any other aircraft?

[W5]

Coulson ferries their 737 Fireliners , and the Herc's to Australia. Their heli's go by boat. Conair also ferries their aircraft downunder.

[North Shore]

415s aren't really made for ferrying. IIRC, when they delivered them to Europe in the early days, they went Gander to Azores - about 1500 nautical, and I don't think that they had bladder tanks installed. That's about max range. *If* you had bladders, and *if* you could get a ferry permit to up the gross wt, then you might be able to double that, and go around through Russia, etc...

I suspect that it might be simpler in the long run to shrink-wrap them and put them on a boat, just as Buffalo did.

WRT cycles, etc. I remember reading the crash report about the Herc that lost its wing in California a few years back. In the report it mentioned that fire ops were worth about 7:1 for hours flown. The Manitoba fleet of 215s (that I'm most familiar with) were 'retired' in favour of new 415s when the oldest ones had ~ 7,000hours on them (so, equivalent to 49,000 by the ratio above.) A rough cast through my logbook over the last 12 years gives me an average of 4.9 drops/hour (total drops made divided by total hours flown,) so that would place the cycles at ~34,000. Several had spar repairs due to cracking.

[Mick G]

The ship idea is silly. Build a ship that will be used twice a year. What would make more sense would be a special barge, and contract the power to an offshore tugboat. Really, all this is a bunch if nonsense to help the struggling shipbuilding industry in Quebec. As long as these are turboprops and not radials, ferrying these with bladders is proven and easy. Lets keep it simple folks.

[valleyboy]

As I said before it isn't the right aircraft for the job given the geography - in a place like Australia it's go big or go home. They need jet tankers and possibly something like an Electra for the smaller jobs -- A lot of the fires have no place to scoop so land based operations except possibly salt . -- has anyone picked up water in the ocean.

[Heliian]

https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2020-01- ... content=V1

More posturing.

[goingnowherefast]

Aren't there a bunch of Q400 tanker conversions? Maybe deHavilland can sell a bunch of new planes. As as been said, aren't many lakes in Australia for a scooper. Salt water on the coast is a no-go, 415s aren't like a Beaver you can rebuild every couple years to deal with corrosion.