Viliamu

While Koru is traveling, I'll field a couple of these questions (I can't speak for him, of course; he'll have to answer the first couple).

Fire fighters do work as a team. Each day, the folks in charge of coordinating the fire fighting effort (different agencies, depending on what country you're in; in the U.S., it's the Forestry Service) put together an attack plan. Depending on the size and scope of the fire, tankers will fight the same fire line or branch off toward different areas to maximize coverage. It all just depends; as with everything aviation-related, flexibility is key.

The number of planes airborne depends on, again, the size of the fire. If it's a big one, there could be eight or ten airborne at any given time. Generally, the tankers try to do very quick refueling/rearming turns to maximize time "on-scene."

Sometimes retardants are used, and sometimes water is employed. Cost, availability, and other factors determine which one is used. One of the more common ones used here in the states is called Phos-check (spelling?). It's reddish-orange in color, and mildly corrosive (great to have around airplanes).

Some of the tankers used are amphibious, and do indeed pick up water directly from a lake source. Very quick turnaround times! Others, like the C-130, have to return to a base to be reloaded with the retardant. It's pumped in under fairly significant pressure, so it doesn't take very long (5 to 10 minutes).

I don't know what Koru's experience was like, but here in the states each tanker typically follows a lead aircraft, usually manned by a Forestry service pilot. The lead pilot will talk the tanker aircraft onto the drop site, and advise when to drop. As you can tell from Koru's video, some of the drop runs are fairly hairy.

We didn't do any checking re other firefighters; that was left to the Forestry service people to determine. Occasionally, you'll hear some horror stories about drops gone bad (there's even a good story about one of the amphibious aircraft inadvertently scooping up a diver from a lake and dropping him on a fire), but generally things go ok.

As for the converted 747, I believe it belongs to Evergreen. Last I heard they hadn't yet received permission to fight fires on Federal land, so they're restricted operationally. It sure seems like an interesting idea, but if they ever crash one, it's going to make a great big mess.

Another post alluded to some of the accidents suffered in fire-fighting recently; many of the aircraft used are very old and not originally designed for this mission. A C-130-A (dating to the early '50's) folded its wings fighting a fire in 2002, and a couple of the amphibs have packed it in over the last couple of years. It's demanding work for people and machinery; putting really old, stressed aircraft on the line was never a good idea.

I don't know how Koru feels about his past experiences; I look forward to a very informative post from him, but I can certainly give you my considered opinion now. With some gray hair and the inexorable passage of time, I'm frankly surprised that more people don't die each year doing aerial fire-fighting. A typical profile will place you in hot, high-density-altitude situations with poor, smoke-filled visibility and high, gusty winds.

Then, you take your heavy, retardant-laden aircraft, and fly it just above stall speed with partial flaps and gear up at approximately 150 feet AGL. When you reach the drop (which might be down the side of a 50-degree embankment with tall trees and a box canyon), you dispense the retardant or water under pressure. The C-130's the ANG uses are capable of putting out about 20,000 lbs of the stuff in less than 10 seconds. Guess what that does to your airspeed and CG? We would generally accelerate about 20 to 25 knots almost instantly while experiencing a significant nose-down pitching moment. It really can get pretty hairy.

Let's just say that I don't miss it. I never did very much of it in practice; more training than actual fires, but scary is scary no matter how you slice it.

Koru, looking forward to your take on this!