Minnesota-based aerial firefighting company Dauntless Air recently announced that it’s starting the 2023 wildfire season with 17 Fire Bosses — nearly double the size of its fleet five years ago. The AT-802F Fire Boss is a water-scooping airtanker equipped with amphibious floats that is purpose-built for aerial firefighting. The company’s Fire Bosses are outfitted with thermal imaging to target hotspots, onboard gel mixing systems, and a custom fire gate to increase water load and match drop pattern to the fire type.
Fire Boss amphibious scooping airtankerWhen near a water source, the Fire Boss can repeat continuous scoops and drops on a fire for 3½ hours.
The company used nine of its water-scooping planes during its 2-week annual training in Cleburne, Texas. Training involved every person in the company, and pilots new to the Fire Boss logged three times the industry standard for pre-season flight hours, flying roughly 25 hours each solo and with an experienced pilot in the company’s two-seat training aircraft. Company pilots completed 844 scoops and dropped over a half million gallons of water.
Pilots trained on radio communications with an Air Attack platform that flew above a training area; they also practiced initial attack on a simulated fire with the Texas Forest Service (TFS). Dozens of TFS incident commanders, along with a pump truck and dozers, participated in training.
U.S. Hotshot Association (USHA) representatives presented a session on the history of the hotshot community and its ties to aerial firefighting. Aviation Medicine Advisory Service (AMAS) President Quay Snyder led a workshop on pilot fatigue, mental health, and fitness for duty, and other training was conducted by the U.S. Office of Aviation Services (OAS), Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR).
14 Comments
Have the Fire Boss folks figured out the asymmetric deployment of the float probes that was causing upsets while in the scoop?
When has that ever happened? On very, very rare occasions, one may get a probe asymmetric advisory but in all cases that I am aware it has been due to an out of position sensor or one probe deploying at a slightly slower rate than the other for whatever reason (hydraulic pack, probe damage, etc). If you can provide a case where probe asymmetry has ever contributed to an incident I think we’d all be interested in reading it.
There was a service letter issued in 2019.
In the autumn of 2019 some aircraft had an issue with faulty asymmetric scoop position indications; it was traced to moisture entering a wire splice in the magnetic scoop position switch assembly and was redesigned to eliminate the soldered splices by using a 6-pin waterproof cannon plug assembly instead of the 4-pin waterproof cannon plug.
Why “Bulging Bill” thinks this is a scandal I don’t know, but for now his commenting privileges are suspended. If anyone’s got better info, please let me know on the CONTACT page. Thanks.
And that outlines an occurrence of asymmetric probe deployment causing an accident? Never heard of such a thing. Please post that here also.
Here’s the service letter.
https://www.wipaire.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Service-Letter-93-Rev-B.pdf
Who said it was a scandal? I never said that, I just know there were a couple incidents (out of bagillions of scoops) and that the FB community was efforting it. Pretty quick to drop the hammer aren’t you? Bill would’ve been more prudent.
“At owner’s/operator’s discretion…”
It’s a service letter, not an AD.
If it were an issue causing loss of aircraft, it would be an AD.
Still waiting for any supporting information made of either claimants regarding probe asymmetry causing any damage or even minor issue. If you have mistakenly made an erroneous claim then remove or at least correct it. If not, we can assume your claim was made for nefarious reasons in an attempt to discredit someone or something. Waiting.
Dear Flying Italian, the only guy here who disparaged the company (or aircraft) is Bulging Bill. He goes by numerous different nicknames on this site, or he used to. The only thing I could find on record about this was the service letter (not an AD) which I linked to. What else do you want here?
Nobody is “disparaging” anything! Jesus. All i asked was if the FB community figured it out, I didn’t even mention name of a company. Don’t be so knee jerky and emotional.Lol.
No emotion whatsoever. Name the “upsets” that you inferred at the outset. Can you do that?
Regarding disparagement, this was an article about a fire company performing their spring preparation for the season, into which you injected some shade about their aircraft type. No, you didn’t name them, but you know the article directly pertained to their operation of that aircraft type. Of course you invoked the company in the article, because you’re bringing this up in an article about the company. We’re not stupid.
The burden of proof is on you, mate. After all, you brought it up.
If this is a preview of the future of this website….count me out
Seriously…what is with all the attitude going on here?
Ever since Bill passed this site is a sunken ship. This new moderator is capricious and hasty. I’m out.
Dauntless is a great company with a lot of good pilots that fight fire safely but aggressively.
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