Aug 05, 2013

Water bomber picking up water.
Nice footage.

http://youtu.be/dDIwOggoWqo

If the link doesn't work try to google
Water Bomber at Shebe Resort, July, 2012

beech 18 wrote: Water bomber picking up water.
Nice footage.
http://youtu.be/dDIwOggoWqo

Damn. Nicely done indeed!

So running a sponson over top of a public swimming area , a half-span away from a group of adults and kids during a scoop immediately adjacent to what appears to be obvious shallow water is cool?

Makes for some spectacular video which will be appreciated by a few as a demonstration of great airframe handling, but it is far from being what would be termed "best operational practices."

Yeah ..... I know .... I'm just a sick-in-the-mud old fogey out to ruin the fun and reputation of an excellent flight crew who are just trying to earn a living in a tough business that maybe got a tiny bit over-exuberant.

...does nice loops too!

http://youtu.be/I8rQLTxlmKg

Wow ..... you're right bmc ...... what superb flying at that Air Show. They are obviously great pilots..... real "Stick 'n Rudder men" that this business could use more of.

From doing my reading here, I know that "if done right," doing aerobatics doesn't exert any stress on a regular old airframe .... regardless of the design standard. So what's the big deal? One non-aerobatic trained crew in my area rolled a Beech 1900 a few years ago, and it's still flying.

After all, just how much to those pompous, ring-wearing Professional Engineers know anyway?

When I attempted to talk with one of the guys I used to work with at the old Athabaska about him regularly flying 20% over certified gross weight, he told me that ........ "those guys don't know any more about building an airplane than you or I do."

I really don't know what ever happened to that fellow ..... I distanced myself from him fairly quickly.

beech 18 wrote:Aug 05, 2013

Water bomber picking up water.
Nice footage.

http://youtu.be/dDIwOggoWqo

If the link doesn't work try to google
Water Bomber at Shebe Resort, July, 2012

Some nice flying there gentlemen, well done.

Swine, you really don't get out much do you?

Yup ..... as I said reality check .... an excellent job by the guys ..... just superb.

I greatly admire them and sure wish I could have overcome that cursed sense of responsibility with the '215 that prevented me from having any fun at all with that airplane.

So running a sponson over top of a public swimming area , a half-span away from a group of adults and kids during a scoop immediately adjacent to what appears to be obvious shallow water is cool?

Makes for some spectacular video which will be appreciated by a few as a demonstration of great airframe handling, but it is far from being what would be termed "best operational practices."

Some nice flying there gentlemen, well done.

Swine, you really don't get out much do you?

He gets out enough to think the same thing as I did when I saw that video.

You guys crack me up. This place never changes.

Thanks for the encouragement ..... I've been thinking of going into improv comedy.

Knowing my posts can induce a good strong belly-laugh does lots for my confidence which will be helpful when I get on stage at "The Beaver" and take topics from the patrons to be turned into a skit, or a series of sound effects made with a hand clasped under an armpit to simulate the sound of a cold start on a radial first thing in the morning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rl_szu57JI

Same fire from the air.

This looks like where they were:

http://goo.gl/maps/3tXU1

It's the closest body of water by a few miles, and it looks like that channel may be the only place they can scoop from on that lake (I'm not a pilot, let alone an 415 pilot, so that's a guess). Whether that absolves them in Cat and SSH's eyes, I dunno, but there it is.

Lets put comedy aside for a moment and ask a simple question.

If something went wrong at the start of the pickup and the airplane yawed to the right and went over that beach with all those people on it what then?

At first I thought it was an illusion caused by the camera lens that made the airplane look to be very close to the beach....so I watched it a few more times and timed how long it took the waves to hit the beach after the airplane passed the beach......

Of course nothing ever goes wrong on water pickups does it.

If you look on the map ., it's only 50 or so meters wide there. They can't have been far from the swimming area. I thought it was telephoto effect at first too, but the second pass removes all doubt on that.

Out of curiosity, how long of a run does an 215/215T/415 need to fill the tanks?

I can see this one might quickly become a real touchy one to comment on as non of us were actually in the airplane to see exactly what it was like.

From watching the video it looked to be very close to the people on the beach.

Judging from what the video showed I would have found a better pick up area without people on a beach that close.

Just my own opinion.

Tanker pilots are gods, they are even above Chris Hatfield in awesomeness. They can truly due no wrong. The PIC deemed this safe, as it was a life threatening emergency and many trees where dying. Everyone who battles forest knows, they are a do anything and take huge risk type of life threatening emergency.

Here's a thought, you see the plane coming after the first pass, get out of the water til they're done! Nah, lets walk closer to get that better picture!!

Nothing new
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=cf5_1375575785
(CL-215 buzzing a beach)
In this particular video, I have no idea how they figure out that nobody was swimming there....

And .... dropping it on a traffic accident; http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=cdc_1376026008

Holy sweet crap...

I'm all for thinking that is cool as hell BUT there has got to something in the rules about making runs like that? Although I guess in the "populated" south, it must be hard to find a water area that hasn't got beaches, cottages etc on every square inch of shoreline...

Just wondering what the engine fail plan would be on water pick up like that; seems to require an "S" turn.

Actually, the "uproar" over a house getting burned would likely not materialize at all, other than with the owners of the house. However, the public outcry over an incident where an onlooker was hit by the plane would be unbelieveable. Sure they are skilled pilots, but they have new guys in the crew at times like any other operation and there's no way to tell whether this crew was or wasn't highly skilled in a relative sense. And even so, when the crap hits the fan, no matter how good you are, you need a bit of wiggle room to deal with it and passing that close to the beach leaves almost zero room for error. And that's not anywhere I think someone should fly.

Awesome video in no way makes a testament to good decision making.

A lot of people here get annoyed when I mention any experiences I have had flying anything....so to those of you who get warped out of shape when I relate past experience click off now and go read something that soothes your soul..


When scooping water you never ever try and guess what spectators may do.

I was on a fire in Manitoba one day and a couple of sea-doos started trying to follow alongside of us on the pick up run, they kept getting closer and closer and finally I decided enough was enough so I climbed up to around five hundred feet above ground and called forestry on the FM radio and told them I could not risk picking up with the ski-doos running alongside of me.

Forestry agreed the risk was to high and told me to orbit the area and they would clear the skipdoos off the lake.

It was not long before the RCMP came ripping down the road with their lights flashing and in no time the lake was clear of boats and Ski-doos.

Had I hit one it would have been 100% my fault....therefore I quit picking up water until the situation was fixed.

Oh, by the way the fire was high risk and burning towards cottages.

It is all about risk assessment.

Perhaps the OPP or local MNR ground staff had already been on site and been advising those in the swim area and on the beach? Who are we to know, we were not there.

I'm sure anyone that has flown here on the coast knows just how close the operations are to the dum dums in pleasure boats who should barely be allowed to walk in public let alone operate a power or sail boat. Nanaimo being among the worst.. other than say landing in the channels in Silva bay when the weekend warriors are out. Always keep an out and I'm sure they had theirs.

So that's how those scuba divers that have been found hanging from trees at the scene of fires tended by skimmers got scooped up....this video makes everything so clear now..

Hey, stick in the mud fogey...in France, we had to scoop slaloming sharply
between hundreds of butt naked sail board ladies!
All them beavers would have given you a heart attack!