Fire fighting planes..anyone fly one?
Follow "choppertony" on instagram. He's one of our local pilots. Flies for San Diego Sheriffs Office. They have two dedicated helicopters for fire and rescue.
In California there are VLAT (Very Large Air Tanker) bases out of Redding, Sacramento, Fresno, San Bernadino, and Porterville. In Oregon, the only one I know of is Medford. That is my usual range on the fire engine, although I have fought fire in Arizona and Utah as well.
VLATs are the Passenger aircraft converted to retardant droppers. Those, an SEATs (Single Engine Air Tankers) is what we mostly get here in SoCal for fixed wing. For helicopters we get the Bell Rangers and Sikorsky Sky Cranes. We have a Sky Crane on my forest (Cleveland National Forest) and can get a fixed wing on station in about 30 minutes.
We couldn't fight fire the same way without them. While they don't put fires out, there are a lot of fires we couldn't catch without them.
In California there are VLAT (Very Large Air Tanker) bases out of Redding, Sacramento, Fresno, San Bernadino, and Porterville. In Oregon, the only one I know of is Medford. That is my usual range on the fire engine, although I have fought fire in Arizona and Utah as well.
VLATs are the Passenger aircraft converted to retardant droppers. Those, an SEATs (Single Engine Air Tankers) is what we mostly get here in SoCal for fixed wing. For helicopters we get the Bell Rangers and Sikorsky Sky Cranes. We have a Sky Crane on my forest (Cleveland National Forest) and can get a fixed wing on station in about 30 minutes.
We couldn't fight fire the same way without them. While they don't put fires out, there are a lot of fires we couldn't catch without them.
