Cal Club Autocross Forums

very sad....

And if this turns out to be arson.....

Smoke up to supposedly 20,000' ... at 7:15 ... from USC ... on the way back from the PCA OC AX:

Smoke was visible from the 15 south of Corona; time was about 7:30-8:00.

This has been parked on Lake Elsinore for the last month and is now helping fight the local fires. Privately owned, under contract to forestry service I believe. Can scoop up over 7000 gallons in 30 seconds and return to fire. Mission is initial suppression. After the Spruce Goose, next largest amphibian plane ever built and was a military bomber. Can stay up for 4 to 6 hours on one fuel load.

http://www.martinmars.com/firefighting.htm

The Sun during the Santiago Cyn Fire.

Santiago Fire from 2007, at Portola and Lake Forrest.

I've seen some very nasty fires here in So Cal in my 12 years. I was living near Griffith Park when they had that nasty fire that almost burned the Hollywood sign. Then while I had my office (practice) in San Diego County back in 2003 for the Cedar Fire. I remember coming out seeing my car covered in soooo much ash that it looked like snow. Finally, my most recent experience was the Santiago/Modjeska Cyn Fire in 2007 because I was surrounded by that fire on 3 sides. I think KJ lives out in that area, and he could probably attest to the how intense it looked!

Today the Evergreen 747 (Tanker 979) will be making drops. All four VLATs (Very Large Air Tanker) should be in the air. The 747 hold twice the load of the DC-10 (tankers 910 & 911). The other VLAT is the Martin Mars.

Side note on the Martin Mars. Craig Angel flew from Hawaii to Korea on one of the Mars.

Google fire map mashup:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&gl ... 9cded17ce4" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I never get the delays getting the aircraft in....

The Canadian super scoopers contract didn't start til 9/4, but I guess they managed to get them a couple days early. 5 times the helicopter water load, but very fast cycle time if the right water source is available.

Wasn't the Martin Mars just sitting on lake Elsinore all this time???

Seems like California should have its on fleet of dedicated firefighting aircraft. Out of service commercial airliners are CHEAP right now... How hard is it to convert them? Get a bunch of crazy Jeff Barco's to fly them!

The Martin Mars has been working the Hemet fire and has some minor maintenance work to do as she just had new equipment installed before coming south , the 747 has just completed a world tour and was in Sacramento for some NorCal fires and tanker 911 has just been sitting waiting to go to work. 911 doesn't have a contact so it has a day to day contact. If they use it, it's a minimum of 5 days or $330,000. Tanker 910 has a 90 day contact with CalFire. The C-130's still don't have the new MAFFS system.

That particular Martin Mars is the old Hawaiian Mars II built in 1946.

Glenn Duensing wrote:DC-10 is out of Adelando/Victorville/George AFB. Takes about 20 minutes to reload and refuel before they are in the air again. Others are out of Norton and Fox Field (Lancaster)

While I won't dispute your comments.... I heard on the radio that the DC-10s are privately owned, and are based out of Murrieta, the 747 out of Perris. The 747 is supposedly scooping out of a lake near Perris, but not Lake Perris.in Riverside CA.
They stated the name.... but it didn't stick, as I had never heard of it. \

The concept of watching a 747 dragging water on the move sounds awesome... and extremely scary at the same time.

We have smaller propeller's out of Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming on the scene.

No way a 747 scoops water out of a lake. I can only do that on Flight Simulator... Under the Golden Gate dodging shark fins.


http://www.evergreenaviation.com/supertanker/whyst.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

747 - http://calfire.blogspot.com/2009/06/air ... hting.html

Seems like California should have its on fleet of dedicated firefighting aircraft. Out of service commercial airliners are CHEAP right now... How hard is it to convert them? Get a bunch of crazy Jeff Barco's to fly them!

We do.... California Dept of Forestry has 23 S-2T tankers, 11 helicopters, and 14 scout/lead planes... http://www.fire.ca.gov/fire_protection/ ... rogram.php

What I don't understand is why when this fire STARTED on Wednesday/Thursday, our STATE FUNDED resources (which are dedicated to putting out small fires before they become a problem) weren't used to put it out when it was only a few hundred acres.

Probably because it's on FEDERAL land... I haven't seen any of the CAL FIRE S-2Ts or their scout planes dropping on this fire... It's all been USFS contracted P-2s, P-3s, and the VLATs...

Craig Naylor wrote:

Glenn Duensing wrote:DC-10 is out of Adelando/Victorville/George AFB. Takes about 20 minutes to reload and refuel before they are in the air again. Others are out of Norton and Fox Field (Lancaster)

While I won't dispute your comments.... I heard on the radio that the DC-10s are privately owned, and are based out of Murrieta, the 747 out of Perris. The 747 is supposedly scooping out of a lake near Perris, but not Lake Perris.in Riverside CA.
They stated the name.... but it didn't stick, as I had never heard of it. \

The concept of watching a 747 dragging water on the move sounds awesome... and extremely scary at the same time.

We have smaller propeller's out of Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming on the scene.

Don't believe everything you hear on the radio. The strip at Murrieta is too small for DC-10s. Ryan Field in Hemet is a CDF base with the S-2 Trackers of Aero Union. The DC-10s are owned by 10 Tanker Air Carrier out of Adelanto (http://www.10tanker.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;). Evergreen's 747 (http://www.evergreenaviation.com/supertanker/index.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;) is having to go to McClellan to reload as Adelanto is too busy with Tankers 910 and 911. Norton could handle land the 747 but the loading area is too small for a 747. Martin Mars is the water plane.

The 747 isn't the best as it can't fly low enough or slow enough to be as good as the DC-10. However if anybody really knows Evergren Aviation, aka "Spook Airlines", the 747 is also being developed for some interesting other uses, hence the different delivery system.

The thing about the 747 with the advanced avionics is that it theoretically can drop at night.

Time lapse of the smoke ... but where's the time lapse showing the fire line moving at night ?!

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-322595

Porno for pyros:

http://vimeo.com/6325431" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Bob Beamesderfer wrote:Porno for pyros:
http://vimeo.com/6325431" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

No wonder I can't breathe.

Nice Bob ... just what I wanted to see ... although a longer one ... longer intervals between frames for a longer period of time ... hours ... of a/the fire line moving quickly across a mountain face would be even more amazing. The problem with time lapse is controlling the exposure, ie. the overly bright flare-ups towards the end of your link ... that are hard to predict. One can't use auto exposure ... as that gives you exposures all over the place.

This is low for a 747



http://jalopnik.com/5350159/evergreen-7 ... t/gallery/

For perspective - 20,000 gallons is a decent sized POOL. They're flying a POOL through the air and dropping it in seconds!

Pool, not swimming pool. I'm pretty sure my moms swimming pool/jacuzzi is 50k

Mako Koiwai wrote:Nice Bob ... just what I wanted to see ... although a longer one ... longer intervals between frames for a longer period of time ... hours ... of a/the fire line moving quickly across a mountain face would be even more amazing. The problem with time lapse is controlling the exposure, ie. the overly bright flare-ups towards the end of your link ... that are hard to predict. One can't use auto exposure ... as that gives you exposures all over the place.

Apparently the guy made that one has others posted on Vimeo.