I was told recently, last week, that they are waiting on Fed certification of adding a tank. I haven’t been near an air program in ages… so I have no clue what I am talking about… but that’s what I was told. At least for the airframes at MCC.
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It is amazing Coulson can purchase a tanker and have it operational in about 2 years from purchase date and its been 10 years for CALFIRE and not one is tanked yet.???
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Civilian contractor VS. Government bureaucracy. It’s that simple.
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Either way (Govt or civilian) the increase sure seems to be paying off
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Maybe it will be Nancy’s last order of business.
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The irony in all of this is that Coulson is going to be the contractor for the Air Force installing their tank design, which they already have the STC for into the Cal Fire C-130s. Should be pretty simple, but the red tape is almost impenetrable.
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Although many many factors are involved on the airworthiness side of getting the planes approved for flying, one of the issues facing CALFIRE is they don’t have pilots with that many flight hours. They are working on it and it just takes time. Coulson on the other hand has a much easier time hiring fully qualified pilots. And once again that’s just the difference in civilian vs gov’t hiring processes.
With a little time, CALFIRE will have a top notch C-130 program.
I just saw that they have 3 in different phases right now. All which have been in their possession less than 2 years.
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Yep and with some bases that will house them will be getting retrofitted to accommodate the C-130 which will take place during winter time.
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One of the reasons it’s taking so long is all the CalFire C130s have to go through depot level maintenance with the USAF, before they are handed over. This includes getting their wing boxes replaced, the part that attaches the wings to the fuselage. The older C130H, esp. those with many flight hours were showing fatigue cracks in the wing boxes, IIRC. The USAF has been dragging it’s feet, plus they have to be slotted in with all the other DOD C130 going through maintenance.
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Stiff wing, piloted air tankers are yesterday’s thinking. CalFire has spent untold dollars and man hours to create its fleet of C-130’s. Suppose it had spent the same amount of effort into a fleet of Chinooks with night fly capabilities…and suppose these same Chinooks could be internally tanked to hold 3,000 gallons and the mud applied through a turret mounted monitor in the nose of the aircraft, directed by the co pilot. No more retardant in the water ways…directed application. Chinooks could operate out of any fixed base, or temporary fire assigned location.
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AA504 a CalFire Beech Super King Air today (7-23) is operating out of Columbia, is this a new addition to the fleet?
I heard some AA traffic today out of Fresno welcoming a new plane to its inaugural flight of which I did not catch the numbers. Not sure if it’s related. But, something went on line today.
7-27: Thanks for the replies below and added to my knowledge base.
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I believe they use that, they have 2, as a training platform for AA and ATGS. The trainee sits up front with the pilot and they trainer can sit right behind the trainee and teach.
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CAL FIRE uses Air Attack 504 as a trainee platform to train new ATGS students. It has been in the fleet for a while now. The other King Air was transitioned into an Intel platform. Additionally, CF contracts two other aircraft during the season to train new ATGS students (AA2CG, AA112)
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Looks like a Greek CL-215 clipped a tree earlier today and didn’t make a recovery.
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Does anyone know why the Bonny AA has been asking for a VLAT for the last 3 hours and can not get an answer as to whether or not one is available?
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I believe there are not enough of the VLATs to fulfill all requests. There are quite a few large fires in Arizona that may have needs as well.
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T914 inbound from AZA.
All other VLATS still.on station at their assigned bases
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Just out of curiosity will 914 go to San Bernardino first so they don’t use AZ mud on a CA fire?
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They’ll go straight to the fire loaded
They’re over the fire dropping now
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T-910 O/S @ Phoenix
T-911 @ Helena
T-912 @ Medford
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