Posted on 05/21/2004 4:31:02 PM PDT by buccaneer81
Jumbo Boeing 747 Reworked to Fight Fires
ASSOCIATED PRESS
McMINNVILLE, Ore. (AP) - The first jumbo jet converted for use as a tanker in fighting forest fires could be ready for service by July, an aviation company said.
The Boeing 747 could carry 20,000 gallons of water or fire retardant, 10 times as much as a conventional propeller tanker, Evergreen International Aviation said Thursday.
The jet was converted over the past year and has made about 50 test flights in Arizona, the McMinnville, Ore.-based company said. The jet still needs approval from the Federal Aviation Administration.
"It represents one of the most advanced pieces of firefighting equipment that's come along in a long time," said Mike Padilla, chief of aviation for the California Department of Firefighting Protection, which hopes to test the jet for its needs this summer.
The U.S. Forest Service recently grounded its 33 largest tankers because of safety concerns after two crashed in 2002. Some members of Congress are trying to get at least some of the tankers restored, but the Forest Service is eager to update the aging fleet.
Federal agencies have not said whether they will use the jumbo jet this summer, or even if they could afford it. Evergreen has not decided on a price for the plane, which it said cost millions of dollars to convert.
Evergreen officials said they don't intend the plane to replace other tankers but rather to be a new tool for fighting the largest fires.
Penn Stohr, Evergreen's chief of supertanker operations, said the company is preparing to set up operations at airports around the country that could serve as bases for the big tanker.
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I could see it if they were talking about a single aircraft type (several C-130's have come apart in the air from overstress). But there are some old Douglass DC-4 and DC-6 airplanes that I don't think have had any problems.
There's some games going on.
All this to avoid using the Russian tanker?
How could a 747 possibly have the maneuverability to perform in this role? Especially loaded.
Seems impressive on the surface but has the same drawback as the rest of the fleet- land-based tankers have a long turnaround time between drops. For the cost involved, I'm betting that the same amount of money spent on a fleet of CL-415s would be far more effective. Wouldn't happen in an election year, though, unless Bombardier built them in Wichita.
I took the liberty of bolding the key word.
There's some games going on.
Yes, there are. Mostly by the tanker owners. There are some reports that they're skimping on maintenance.
It is manuverable enough, especially if it is a 747-SP.
WOW, maybe so, I had not looked at it that way. I will have to ponder that and listen for more facts on the issue.
Why not twin Shorts? Low, and slow turboprops is the way to go. A fully loaded, sloppy, and dirty 747 trying to spool up in a mountain pass is pretty damned stupid.
My flight school roommate's dad was a 747 captain for United Airlines. He had the SFO to HNL route. My friend told me that if a missed approach was executed in a sloppy, slow, 747 below 1000' AGL, there was no way the wheels were not going to touch the ground before climb configuration could be achieved with any result.
Problem solved and a good way to waive America's might in the face of evil.
I have very little knowledge of airplanes, but with a large palne, flying low and slow, when the liquid drops, doe't you have a HUGE problem with the center of gravity shifting, and NO time, or altitude, to recover...it seems really risky..
The Kerry campaign just issued a statement that if the Bush administration had funded these tankers, they could have prevented the collapse of the WTC towers..
But you are correct. That DC-8 running freight out of Miami had a few thousand pound roll of carpet slide aft by about ten feet. That was all she wrote.........Ignoring fuel burn profile can get you too in some planes. If you run some tanks before others, you can find yourself in a very dangerous situation.
At reduced gross weights and inside a very narrow CG window, some aircraft operate in the utility catagory(abrupt maneuvers and banking angles are OK). None of those airplanes, with the exception of the learjet are stressed for such operations. All commercial carrier jets are in the normal catagory, excluding such maneuvers and uses.
That is a bit over-dramatic. Full flaps, without a lot of gas, 1000 feet is plenty of room to spool up. However, I think this is a very bad idea. Water is HEAVY, with its own momentum too. Stress at the wing roots will be amazing during pulls to level during release. I would bet even money you see a stress failure and a nice explosion soon enough.
"skimping" on maintenance on a 50 year old airplane that's only flown a few hundred hours a year is a relative term.
I'm an ex AirForce mechanic, commercial pilot, and A&P. I could ground any aircraft, anywhere, if you just give me time to look hard enough. I've seen military aircraft "grounded" that had nothing wrong with them. I've seen the same type airplane signed off as flyable with 6 inch cracks in the spar (I'm not responsible for either case).
I frankly don't buy it that "all" the tanker fleet is suddenly "unsafe". If they grounded some of them, AFTER doing specific inspections, fine. But not all of them, from every operator, no matter what type.
Something fishy is going on with the politics of this.
The gubmint buying tankers from Boeing is going to happen. They have to pay Boeing for keeping their mouth's shut during the TWA 800 fraccus. The economic damage to Boeing is beyond the places in my calculator. All to maintain deniability about being shot down.
We had an ORION once back when I was in VP-8 that flew all kinds of missions...bounces, tac trainers, ASW, you name it. Maintinence then discovered that the wing spars were cracked, in multiple places. Some of us got a little nervous after that.
Recently, the allowable hours on the P-3 airframe has been cut dramatically, due to the limits of service life being reached. We've already sent some to the boneyard.
I just hope we get a replacement before a crew has to die to accelerate the process. I love the old girl, but it's time for her to retire.
As for the 747-as-a-tanker, I'd have to have a LOT of questions answered before I thought it was anything other than a political boondoggle. The 747 is a great passenger airliner, no doubt, but in this role, I can't see it.
Nobody outside of a handfull of people understand anything about aircraft maintenance. Moreover, nobody wants to hear from them either.
I love the idea of Shorts for this role. They are the pickup trucks of the sky.
I just hope I live long enough.
Sadly, you're right though...the P-3 community is largely overlooked when the budget is divvied up. To get them to notice the SERIOUS problems we have keeping these old bird flying, it'll probably take the death of an 11-man crew, in some spectacular crash.
Doesn't anyone see the humor in the 747 putting out fires after running on the ground for prolonged periods and then flying into the lick of the flames of a forest fire? I thought those things blew up during even remotely similar profiles of use?
You're right, you have very little knowledge of airplanes.
The main result upon dropping the load will be to prevent it from going straight up (gaining altitude very rapidly).
I'm talkin 747's in the 60's. His dad also flew the DC-3's to HNL after WWII which flew under the Golden Gate Bridge due to being so over gross with fuel on takeoff.
The jet was converted over the past year and has made about 50 test flights in Arizona, the McMinnville, Ore.-based company said. The jet still needs approval from the Federal Aviation Administration.
They grounded them but I heard there is a deal being worked out where they will go on a plane by plane review and OK if they can be demonstrated safe. So that order grounding them all has been suspended I believe.
I just saw a real video of the jet dumping water and retardant on The Weather Channel (discussing wildfires)
What I'm looking forward to is a new electronics suite...ours now dates from the early 80's, with graphics and processing straight out of Atari. Hell, we still use reel-to-reel recorders to record missions on some of them. The software JUST LAST YEAR was put on a disc to load it from...before that we used huge metallic mag-cartriges.
The programme is called "MMA", as in "Multi-Mission marritime Aircraft". Do some googling, or check the links at my homepage bookmarks here. There's some stuff there, including pics. There's only one prototype flying right now, but it's unpainted, has no mission electronics, and no weapons mounts. It's basically a stripped 737 with some toys in the cockpit.
You also had another engine and an ejection seat.
That P3 crew won't stand a chance if they snap off a wing at 500 ft.
...and that wasn't duct tape. An AMHC yelled at me once for calling it that.
The 747 first flew in 1969 and did not enter service until the 70's.
Since it also carries a 360-degree extendable camera, with IR and long-range lenses, we can see them no matter what. We've got an earlier version right now.
"The 747 first flew in 1969 and did not enter service until the 70's."
Nope.
747 first flight: 1968
747 first revenue flight: 1970
Very convincing video on the Evergreen website. Wow. And 50 test flights so far. Looks like they're getting this nailed down well.
As for a Shorts: no way. Northern Ireland piece of cr--. Short legs, low payload, poor build quality.
IL-76 Waterbomber
Wow, I just searched the page for China and nothing came up.
You know the very first 747-100 is at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. Right across the street.
We used to call the Shorts "THE IRISH CONCORD"
Lousiest bird I ever flew, it's single engine performance was marginal at best.
Didn't have enough rudder in my book.
I did a test flight with sand bags simulating a max weight for a single engine go around.
I had all the rudder into it as well as MORE than 50% of usable aileron ( You guys KNOW what THAT means)and still couldn't maintain runway heading.
I didn't like the SOB at all.
Just MHO
Dump the load out of a low and slow 747 and it'll jump up 1000 feet without any help from the crew. I've had BUFF pilots tell me of gaining 3000 feet as the bombs were dropping out.
The Canucks have had some pretty impressive air tankers for some time now. i think they bought them from OUR navy.
http://www.martinmars.com/fireserv.html
Richard
The ideal firefighting plane would be the Beriyav A-40. An amphibious flying boat.
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