Aerial Firefighting....civilian combat flying

MikeD

Administrator
Staff member
More ballsy-flying. Tough as heck mission in not-so-new equipment. Know a number of these guys. That's flying!

Pic#1: Hemet-Valley Flying Service C-119 making a drop


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Nice work if you can get it, I guess.
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(and exactly how DO you get it? always wondered..)

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There's specific mins for tanker flying. You come on as a co-pilot in the heavies, or FE in the C-130s, which as of now are still not flying. With the number of aircraft contracted per season, there's only about 44 co-pilot seats open (not counting reserve crews) per season. For the single pilot stuff, one coul fly S-2s for California Department of Forestry (contract pilot) or SEATs, Single Engine Air Tankers....AT-802Fs, Dromadiers, or other Ag aircraft.
 
Do a search on google for aerial firefighting and you'll come across various Web sites for the associations and such. I looked it up a few years back because my first instructor was interested in it.
 
Wow, 44 FO slots nationwide?? I guess you'd better have a network like microsoft to land that kind of fish. Are the C-130's not flying because of that incident in CA last year with the wings? There was a guy on the radio the other day, cracked me up. He was talking about using predators and global hawks to drop retardant on fires. "...and we got all them GPS cluster bombs we drop on the ay-rabs, why cain't we drop cluster bombs fulla water on them fars?". Not exaggerating.
 
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Wow, 44 FO slots nationwide?? I guess you'd better have a network like microsoft to land that kind of fish. Are the C-130's not flying because of that incident in CA last year with the wings? There was a guy on the radio the other day, cracked me up. He was talking about using predators and global hawks to drop retardant on fires. "...and we got all them GPS cluster bombs we drop on the ay-rabs, why cain't we drop cluster bombs fulla water on them fars?". Not exaggerating.

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Yes, the A-model C-130s that were USAF surplus (1956-57 models) are grounded for firefighting following N130HPs loss of wings in California. The MAFFS C-130s of the Air National Guard are unaffected, however, since these are all H-models.

Networking is paramount for this job.
 
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