The photo above was taken on a fire south of Ashland, Oregon on September 21, 2009. It may have been taken with a long telephoto lens making the helicopter appear closer to the air tanker than it actually was. But even considering that, it is very unusual for a helicopter to be that close to an air tanker when the air tanker is dropping.
The photo is from an article about an air tanker that was finished with its season at Medford, Oregon on September 21 and was warming up its engines preparing to fly home when it got dispatched to a couple of fires.
I think its a optical trick of the lense. Looks like a light helicopter to me. No chopper pilot sane or otherwise would in real life get that close to a slurry drop. It’s still a neat picture.
If they’re in the same airspace, that’s a DAMNED big helicopter. Skunkworks rotors ???? I want to find out the diameter of the line that’s hauling that bucket and what the capacity in gallons might be. Wow.
Well, gee, Gabbert, talk about Ken stirring the pot. [LOL] That’s obviously a Butler tanker, and their pilots in combination with ODF wouldn’t do anything dumb. The photographer, Bob Pennell, can be reached at bpennell@mailtribune.com, and you might have just emailed him before questioning his lenses … but if you look again at the size of the DC-7 tanker and the helicopter and the trees on the slope in the background, you’ll likely answer your own "airspace" question. and NO, I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT’S UP WITH THE BUTLER WEBSITE LATELY (!?!) For what it’s worth, HIGH FIVES to Butler and their pilots and ODF and the state govt folks who have kept these Dougs flying in Oregon despite the USFS prohibition forbidding the aircraft on fed fires. Oregon kinda flipped off the FS after the fed grounding of the DC-7 (and other) tankers, and kept them on contract in Medford and Redmond (and elsewhere). California picked ’em up for a couple different contracts. I am glad to see them still flying and wish the other adjacent states would follow suit, but Butler’s got only so many ships to go around. If you hunt through the pages athttp://firepirates.com/photos/you’ll find quite a few of the Butler ships and pilots ….