It was the heaviest aircraft ever built and held the record for weight of cargo
Continue readingWorld’s largest airplane reportedly destroyed in Ukraine
It was the only Antonov An-225 built
Continue readingHelicopter lineup for Australia this fire season
The helicopters will be phased in over the next several weeks.
Continue readingRussian plane transports three fire engines from New Jersey to California
September 13, 2020 | 9:05 a.m. PDT
An Antonov-124-100 transported three New Jersey fire engines to California. Photo: San Francisco Fire Department, September 12, 2020.An Antonov-124-100 transported three New Jersey Forest Fire Service engines and 10 firefighters to San Francisco on Saturday.
Volga Dnepr operates 12 of the aircraft.
An Antonov-124-100 transports New Jersey fire engines to California. NFFS photo by Michael Achey.
An Antonov-124-100 transported New Jersey fire engines to California. Photo: San Francisco Fire Department, September 12, 2020.And, speaking of very large airplanes, the image below is a screenshot from a great video on Helga Desclouox’s Facebook page of a DC-10 dropping on the Almeda Fire in Southern Oregon, September 8, 2020.
DC-10 dropping on the Almeda Fire in southern Oregon. Screenshot from video by Helga Descloux.The image above of a DC-10 dropping on the Almeda Fire in southern Oregon is a screenshot from a video on Helga Desclouox’s Facebook page.
Erickson delivers another Air Crane to Korea Forest Service
This brings the KFS operational fleet up to six S-64 Air Crane helicopters
Continue readingCoulson ships a CH47D to Bolivia on an Antonov
Coulson photoCoulson Aviation announced on August 31 that the company had secured a contract with the Bolivian Ministry of Defense to provide three Type 1 helicopters to assist the firefighters that are battling wildfires.
Shortly thereafter two of the company’s S-61 helicopters departed from California to begin a multi-day flight to South America.
On September 4 the third helicopter began its journey on a very large cargo plane from the airport at San Bernardino, California. Here’s what the company wrote on their Facebook page, along with these photos they posted:
The Coulson Unical CH-47D, N47CU, was loaded onto the Antonov An-124 this afternoon after a long night and morning of teardown. To fit in the airplane the blades, both the forward and rear drivetrain, and the rear pylon needed to be removed. This is a huge task to accomplish in such a short time but the team came through and will get some well deserved rest on the flight down.
Coulson photo.Coulson has partnered with Unical Air, a new unit of the Unical Group of Companies to create a heavy lift helicopter joint venture company that will build and operate Boeing CH-47 and Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawk aircraft for aerial firefighting and other markets. We interviewed Britt Coulson about this venture at the HAI Heli-Expo in Atlanta, March 5, 2019.
Antonov An-124. Coulson photo.
Coulson photo.
Coulson photo.Helicopter Express sends four helicopters to Chile on Antonov AN-124
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Above: An Antonov AN-124 after it arrived in Santiago, Chile carrying four helicopters. Photo by Tom Parsons of Global Supertanker.
An Antonov AN-124 arrived in Santiago, Chile Tuesday morning and unloaded three Bell 205 helicopters, one K-MAX 1200, and a flatbed truck with an attached goose-neck trailer. The Chilean government contracted with Helicopter Express out of Chamblee, Georgia to supply the equipment during the siege of wildfires that has been plaguing the country for the last several weeks.
Helicopter Express helicopters before loading onto the Antonov AN-124 at Atlanta, Georgia. Helicopter Express photo.The helicopters and the truck were loaded onto the Ukrainian freighter at Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport Monday for the flight to South America.
CNN Chile reported that one of the helicopters has night-flying capabilities.
Australia gearing up air assets for bushfire season
Contracted aerial firefighting assets are arriving in Victoria for the Australian bushfire season. Conair’s Tanker 162, an RJ-85, arrived on December 7. Coulson’s C-130Q is expected to be there by Monday night local time, December 8. They will be based at the Avalon Airport in Victoria.
As usual, two of Coulson’s S61 helicopters will be on contract, beginning December 17 this year. One of them was in storage over the winter at Essendon Airport. The other was seen December 8 being trucked from Port Melbourne to Essendon.
Two Erickson Air-Crane helicopters are being contracted through Kestrel Aviation in Victoria for service in the state.
New South Wales had two Air-Cranes delivered by an Antonov cargo aircraft on October 4. Those two helicopters are “Gypsy Lady” and “Ichabod”; their contract started on October 6.
(UPDATED at 8 p.m. MST December 7, to provide more detailed information about the helicopters, and the ETA of the C-130Q.)
Antonov AN-32P Firekiller
This is an air tanker that we were not familiar with until today. The Antonov AN-32P Firekiller air tanker received its type certificate in 1995. It is a variant of the AN-32 which was first produced in 1976. According to Antonov, a state-owned company in Ukraine, it can carry 8 tons which translates to about 2,000 gallons.
Below is an excerpt from the Antonov website:
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“This aircraft was developed on the basis of the AN-32 commercially produced transport and it is capable to perform the following missions for the forests conservation and protection: extinguishing the forest fires with the special fire liquid; airdropping the smoke jumpers, their equipment, special aids, equipment and cargoes to the area of forest fire.
The design performance of the aircraft have been confirmed during more than 10 years of operation. After discharging 8 tons of fire extinguishing liquid from two groups of tanks of the aircraft, from the altitude of 40-50 m at a speed of 240 to 260 km/h, a water spot of 120-160 m long and 10-35 m wide with concentration of the liquid exceeding 1 liter per sq. m is formed on the ground. Discharging the fire agent may be done simultaneously (in a single discharge) or serially from two tanks of one board, than of the other board, with an automatic delay or with manual control.
Two airplanes were used to extinguish the high-elevated forest fire in the vicinity of Yalta (Ukraine). The experience of their application (about 100 flights over mountain terrains) showed a high efficiency of these aircraft.
Three aircraft AN-32P were sent to Portugal for the experimental operation. A high intensive work (each airplane used to perform up to 10 or even 12 flights daily) resulted in a total of 545 fire fighting flights. The performance and fire fighting effectiveness of the aircraft were highly appreciated by the specialists who participated in the test operation.
In absence of fires, the aircraft can be converted (within the airfield conditions) into a standard cargo variant for airlift.”
Australians impatient to get Air-Cranes into the air
The Australian government has been contracting for Erickson Air-Crane helicopters during their down-under fire seasons since ”Millie” (N223AC) was deployed there in 1997. They seem to have a special fondness for the ships which can carry 2,650 gallons of water, especially since the 2001-2002 bushfire season when ”Georgia Peach” (N154AC) and “Incredible Hulk” (N164AC), were rushed out from the U.S.A on board a Russian Antonov An-124 air freighter to assist with bushfires near Sydney, working with “Elvis” which was already “in the building”.
Their fire season this year has caught the Aussies by surprise, starting in New South Wales weeks earlier than usual — before the contract for the Sky-Cranes begins. While at least two Air-Cranes had already been shipped to the country from Greece by air freighter, not all of the flight crews had arrived when dozens of very large bush fires broke out that so far have burned about 200 homes and caused the death of one person. There is a bit of a controversy going on with some residents not able to understand why the huge helicopters can’t be used to fight fires without a flight crew.
One headline shouted the news:
Critical US water bomber grounded during NSW bushfire crisis
Reports say that by this weekend both Air-Cranes were actively fighting the fires.
