Museum of Flight & Aerial Firefighting near Greybull, Wyoming. PBS image.
PBS in Wyoming has produced a seven-minute overview of Hawkins & Powers, a Wyoming-based organization that a couple of decades ago was one of the largest companies operating firefighting air tankers.
If you have not been to the museum, you should put it on your list. Location: just west of Greybull, Wyoming on the north side of highway 14 adjacent to the South Bighorn County airport. Lat, 44.509810; Lon, -108.084761
Museum of Flight and Aerial Firefighting, Tanker 127, a PB4Y-2. May 26, 2014. Photo by Bill Gabbert.
Grand Teton National Park Jenny Lake Rangers and the Teton Interagency Helitack Team were recently awarded the 2020 National Park Service Tom Clausing All-Risk Program Award. This national award recognizes work and interaction with others while rendering all-risk services.
National Park Service Rangers Scott Guenther and Case Martin, U.S. Forest Service interagency helitack team members Mike Bentley and Travis Nichols, and pilot Zaron Welch were recognized for their risk-management leadership and actions during incidents this past year with the COVID-19 pandemic. As quoted in the award recognition, these individuals displayed excellent professionalism and risk-management decision making while rendering aid, ensuring both patients and crew were protected from the virus.
“Grand Teton National Park and Bridger-Teton National Forest staff have a long tradition of providing excellent all-hazard support to the public and employees. Since the inception of the interagency program, the pilots and crewmembers have assisted dozens of people,” said National Park Service Branch Chief for Aviation John Buehler.
The Jenny Lake Park Rangers are highly skilled climbers and rescuers. In partnership with expert helicopter pilots, they manage remote rescue operations in the high and challenging peaks of the iconic Teton Range. They are members of a broader Ranger staff at Grand Teton that have medical and emergency training that respond to all types of incidents.
The Teton Interagency Helitack Crew is a shared National Park Service and Forest Service resource that staffs two exclusive use helicopters contracted by the Forest Service. The crew serves wildland fire and search and rescue needs of the local community while also completing facility and resource management missions for the park and forest. This interagency program has resulted in significant efficiencies compared to traditional single-agency programs.
This national award, named in honor of former Grand Canyon Paramedic Tom Clausing recognizes an individual or organization who shows exemplary qualities in all-risk services. Tom Clausing worked at Grand Canyon for six seasons, striving to advance Grand Canyon’s Emergency Medical Services and the relationship of rangers, firefighters, and pilots. In 2008 Tom lost his life in a helicopter crash in Flagstaff, Arizona while providing care to an injured firefighter. The award that bears his name honors anyone who, like Tom, works tirelessly to improve provider skills and further aviation hazards programs.
The lightning-caused fire has burned over 32,000 acres eight miles northwest of Wheatland, Wyoming
A BAe-146 drops on the Britania Mountain Fire. A screen shot from the video below which was uploaded August 30, 2018.
Brenton Soule shot these videos at the Britania Mountain Fire in southeast Wyoming. They were uploaded to Facebook August 30, 2018.
I noticed that the audio was more intense than in most air tanker videos… probably because he was about as close as you can get to the aircraft while still remaining safely out of the drop zone.
In moving a retired P2V aircraft from the boneyard area at the Greybull, Wyoming airport to the nearby air tanker museum, it got stuck in the soft ground last weekend. Their plans are to let it sit there until either the soil dries out or the ground freezes.
Above: Tanker 127, a PB4Y-2, at the Museum of Flight and Aerial Firefighting, Greybull, WY. Photo by Bill Gabbert.
The classic air tankers parked next to the rest stop on highway 20/14/16 just west of Greybull, Wyoming look incongruous sitting in the weeds. Most people drive on by the Museum of Flight and Aerial Firefighting, but Zach Bowman didn’t — he wrote about the retired Hawkins & Powers aircraft for Yahoo News. Here are some excerpts from his article:
We see them from the road, a scattering of old birds, their fuselages bright under the Wyoming sun. Their liveries are simple. Just a few splashes of blood orange on cowl and wing tip, the rest left to bare and brilliant aluminum. We don’t know what they are, or why they’re so close to the road, nosed up to a rest area like big, gleaming cows at a trough. Brandon comes over the CB:
“Do you want to go back and check it out?”
The answer should be, “No.” We’ve strung a week’s worth of long days together, pushing hard for the west coast, and spent most of the morning tending to necessaries in Ten Sleep. We’re barely an hour down the road, and we’ve got plenty more ground to cover before the day’s over.
“Absolutely,” is what I say.
[…]
Standing there among what’s left, most of it privately owned and on loan to the museum, it’s hard not to feel a pang. For a second, these planes were still in the air. Not parked and rotting. Not cut up for scrap. Working, as they were built to do. Not destroying the world beneath their wide wings, but preserving it. Not taking men’s lives, but buying them precious seconds. Enough to evacuate a home or dig a fire line. Enough to matter.
Four CL-415 water-scooping air tankers at Cody, Wyoming during the week of August 1, 2016. Some of them had been working the nearby Whit Fire and scooping out of Buffalo Bill Reservoir six miles from the fire. Photo by Becky Lester Hawkins.
Ten additional air tankers brought on temporarily
In the last few weeks the U.S. Forest Service has brought on ten additional air tankers on a temporary basis. This includes CL-415 water-scoopers, CV-580’s, and Modular Airborne FireFighting System (MAFFS) C-130’s. Two of the aircraft were acquired through Call When Needed (CWN) agreements; four via agreements with Alaska and Canada; two MAFFS through an agreement with the Department of Defense; and two water scoopers through other contracts.
HC-130H’s
The U.S. Forest Service expects to have two HC-130H aircraft at McClellan Air Field in September. These are part of the seven aircraft fleet of HC-130H’s that the agency is receiving from the Coast Guard.
Tanker 118, an HC-130H, at McClellan Airport. Photo by Jon Wright, July 25, 2015.
Last year one of the HC-130H’s worked out of McClellan using a MAFFS, a slip-in 3,000-gallon pressurized retardant system that pumps the liquid out the left side troop door. That was aircraft #1721 designated as Tanker 118, still painted in military colors. T-118 is now undergoing scheduled depot-level maintenance and should be replaced in September of this year by #1708 designated as Tanker 116. It will also use a slip-in MAFFS unit, one of the eight owned by the USFS, but should be sporting a new USFS air tanker paint job. After T-118 left, another former Coast Guard aircraft took its place, #1706. It is being used for training the contracted pilots and will not serve as an air tanker.
Early in 2015 the plan was to have two HC-130H’s at McClellan. One would be used as an air tanker, and the second would be used as a training platform. Below is a portion of that early 2015 plan which we covered February 9, 2015.
The USFS plans in early 2015 for incorporating the seven HC-130H aircraft into a Government-Owned/Contractor-Operated fleet of air tankers. Click to enlarge.
Eventually the USFS hopes to have all seven converted to air tankers with removable retardant tanks. A contract for the installation of the retardant delivery systems was awarded to the Coulson Group in May. There is also much other work that has to be completed on the aircraft including programmed depot maintenance, painting, and wing box replacement on most of them. The work is being done or coordinated by the U.S. Air Force. They were directed by Congressional legislation to use their own funds, up to $130 million, so it is no surprise that the schedule keeps slipping as delays continue to occur in awarding contracts and scheduling the maintenance.
The USFS has two water-scooping CL-415 air tankers on exclusive use contract. As noted above they recently temporarily brought on two more on a call when needed basis. All four are operated by AeroFlite and as seen in the photo above were together at Cody last week.
Air Spray
There was some discussion in the comment section of another article on Fire Aviation about the status of the BAe-146 aircraft being converted to air tankers by Air Spray. The company has five of the 146’s; two are out of the country and the other three are at the company’s Chico, California facility. Ravi Saip, their Director of Maintenance/General Manager, told Fire Aviation that they expect to begin flight testing one of them in air tanker mode around the first of the year. After they receive a supplemental type certificate from the FAA, work on the second one would shift into high gear. Then conversion of the other three would begin.
Air Spray’s T-241 finishing its amphibious conversion at the Wipaire facility in Minnesota. Air Spray photo.
Air Spray also has eight Air Tractor 802 single engine air tankers that they have purchased since 2014. Five of them have received the amphibious conversion by adding floats, and the other three are stock, restricted to wheels.
Air Spray’s Tanker 498, an L-188 Electra, is currently in Sacramento being inspected and carded by CAL FIRE so that it can be used in a Call When Needed capacity.
747 SuperTanker
Jim Wheeler, President and CEO of Global SuperTanker Services, told us that the FAA has awarded a supplemental type certificate for their reborn 747 SuperTanker — a major and sometimes very difficult barrier to overcome. Within the next two weeks they expect to receive the airworthiness certificate.
T-944 at Colorado Springs May 4, 2016. Photo by Bill Gabbert.
Beginning next week representatives from the USFS will observe some additional static tests and then there will be an airborne descent test, a new test added in 2013, releasing retardant in a downhill drop. That test was not required when Version 1.0 of the 747 was certified. It may have been added after it was discovered that the first BAe-146’s that were converted and issued contracts still retained hundreds of gallons of retardant after downhill runs.
These steps should take less than two weeks, Mr. Wheeler said, after which they will submit the results to the Interagency AirTanker Board.
Jennifer Jones, a spokesperson for the USFS, told Fire Aviation that the company was offered an opportunity to submit a proposal for a call when needed contract solicitation in 2015, along with numerous other companies, but declined to do so. Their next opportunity to obtain a contract will be when another general solicitation is issued in 2017, or perhaps sooner, Ms. Jones said. The agency issued a Request for Information a few weeks ago, which is usually followed some months later with an actual solicitation.
Judging from the list of CWN air tankers with contracts, apparently it is possible to submit a proposal and receive a USFS CWN contract even if the aircraft exists mostly on paper and could be years away from being FAA and Interagency AirTanker Board certified.
In the meantime Mr. Wheeler realizes that the USFS is not the only organization that hires air tankers and has been talking with a number of other agencies in various states and countries as well as companies involved in marine firefighting.
Global SuperTanker is in the process of finishing repairs on the 747 in Arizona after some of the composite flight control surfaces (flaps, spoilers, elevators) and engine cowlings were damaged by golf ball sized hail at Colorado Springs several weeks ago. There was no windscreen or fuselage damage.
Mr. Wheeler said that was the first severe hailstorm within the last seven years at the Colorado Springs airport. But, after the aircraft left to be repaired in Arizona a second hailstorm struck the airport that some have said was a 100-year event and did much more damage than the first one.
Permanent base for the HC-130H air tankers
On September 2, 2015 the USFS formally requested information from facilities that could support the seven-aircraft HC-130H fleet (Solicitation Number SN-2015-16), with responses due September 16. The agency was only asking for information from interested parties, and will not award a contract based on the Request for Information. A few politicians fell all over themselves arguing that the aircraft should be based in their state.
Since then no decisions have been made. Ms. Jones told Fire Aviation:
The U.S. Forest Service continues to cooperate with the Department of Defense to identify potential federal facilities, which must be considered first.
It is unlikely that more than one or two of the seven HC-130H’s would be at the new base at at any one time, except during the winter when they would not have to be dispersed around the country to be available for firefighting. While the base might not be a huge expansion of the aerial firefighting capabilities in an area, the stationing of the flight crews, maintenance, and administrative personnel would be a boost to the economy of a small or medium-sized city.
Yesterday while traveling down US Highway 16 in eastern Wyoming near Osage I saw a helicopter hovering near the top of a powerline pole. There was crewman standing on a skid who appeared to be installing hardware.
The helicopter, a McDonnell Douglas 369E, is registered to Winco Powerline Services. The company “provides a complete range of both helicopter-assisted and traditional electric transmission line construction and maintenance services”, including “specialized wire stringing, line maintenance and repair operations”.
Sky Aviation purchased four CH-46 helicopters in 2015.
Sky Aviation’s CH-46E at the Lava Mountain Fire
Alyssa Gaulke of Sky Aviation sent us some photos of one of their CH-46E that is assigned on the Lava Mountain Fire 17 air miles northwest of Dubois, Wyoming — and we found more at their Facebook page.
This CH-46E is one of four that the Worland, Wyoming-based company acquired last year.
Sky Aviation’s CH-46E at the Lava Mountain FireSky Aviation’s CH-46E. A screen grab from a video on the company’s Facebook page posted about a month ago.
