Ryan Grothe sent us a collection of eye candy from the Bonny Fire. “Numerous helicopters were getting water from Riverside Lake while assisting with the Bonny Fire,” he said, including a Columbia CH-47 and a PJ Helicopters CH-47, Cal Fire Copter 202 and an Erickson Aircrane.
“The Bonny Fire burned 2,322 acres in Riverside County. It started on July 27 and was fully contained on August 9. Cause of the fire remains under investigation.”
ABC7-TV reported that numerous airtankers also worked on the fire.
Photo ©2023 Ryan Grothe
Photo ©2023 Ryan Grothe
Photo ©2023 Ryan Grothe
Photo ©2023 Ryan Grothe
Photo ©2023 Ryan Grothe
Photo ©2023 Ryan Grothe
Photo ©2023 Ryan Grothe
7 Comments
Kelly
Thanks for taking this site over. We all miss Bill but are thankful for your efforts.
Gary
Chico
Thanks Gary, I think about him every day.
Hi, on the third photograph there is 2 CH 47 the one in the background is that PJ helicopters?, Curiosity question where did PJ helicopters purchase this helicopter and I understand from a YouTube video that there are in the process of buying a second one.
Yes the helicopter in the back is a PJ Helicopters CH-47. They acquired 4 that are in operation now. A 5th will be in operations soon. Not sure where it was purchased from. I got quite a few photos of this one at the dip site too.
I spent a hour digging around for the purchase data, and from whom, PJ bought their Chinooks from. No joy.
Best I got was PJ went into the CH-47 business about 2021 and had two Chinooks airborne in 2022.
US auction perchance?
No other operator data about a sale to PJ.
The US started auctioning off D models in 2013. Of course, other nations sold their Chinooks to private operators too over the years.
The company has contact info here, Tom:
https://www.pjhelicopters.com/contact
Located the sellers for two of the PJ Chinooks (N160AT/M3384 and N258PJ/M3407:
Unical Defense bought them from GSA as surplus .PJ registered them in April 2022.
It seems Unical Defense has a number of ex Army CH-47’s in storage at San Bernardino.
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