Rick McClure, a free-lance photographer for the Associated Press and fire publications, got this spectacular photo of Tanker 41, a BAe-146, dropping on the Devore Fire in Cajon Pass in Southern California November 5, 2012. He shot it with a Nikon D5000 at f/6.3, 1/640. And he was not half a mile away using a huge telephoto lens. This was a zoom lens at 150 mm.
Mr. McClure told us “I actually couldn’t run fast enough to get totally out of the drift.” One other photo he got for us is at our new sister site, Fire Aviation.
The Devore Fire burned 350 acres along Interstate 15 in the San Bernardino National Forest.
Wow!!!
Got to see my first BAe-146 in action on this fire. While it didn’t have a throaty sound of piston engines (it was actually very quiet), it was a beautiful sight in the air… and it dropped lots of retardant with the 7 other air tankers assigned.
I’m sold that the BAe-146 is going to be the next work horse of the airtanker industry… much like how the P2V/SP2H platforms have done for the last 30+ years.