Tanker 119 at McClellan, shortly after getting new paint. Photo by Mike McKeig November 20, 2020.
Mike McKeig sent us an excellent photo of CAL FIRE’s Tanker 119 taken after the aircraft received a new paint job.
This is at least the third of seven HC-130H aircraft the agency is getting from the Coast Guard that have been painted in CAL FIRE livery. The plan is for all seven to receive internal gravity-powered retardant tanks so they can be used as air tankers. In May we had photos of Tankers 116 and 118.
The rudder on T-118 was also one of the last components to be painted, like T-119 at the top of the article.
A new contract awarded to DynCorp specifies that in addition to maintaining and supplying pilots for CAL FIRE’s fleet of S-2T air tankers, they will do the same for the HC-130H tankers.
Here is a “before” photo of T-119:
T-119, an HC-130H, was seen at McClellan May 5, 2020. Photo by John Vogel.
Below are Tankers 118 and 116:
CAL FIRE air tanker 118 at Sacramento McClellan Airport. Photographed by John Vogel March 4, 2020. CAL FIRE air tanker 116 at Sacramento McClellan Airport. Photographed by John Vogel March 4, 2020.
Stavatti introduces the SM-100AT air tanker. A clean-sheet-of-paper, new design, the SM-100AT will deliver 4,000 gallons of fire retardant.
The video below shows the effects of air tanker drops in timber. The first part shows a dozer line or road on the edge of the Glass Fire in Northern California. Then you will see where red fire retardant dropped by air tankers has slowed the advance of the fire. When it can be done safely, firefighters on the ground or on dozers will need to construct a bare-earth fireline where the fire has burned into or through the retardant. Aircraft dropping water or retardant do not put out a fire, they can only slow the spread, and only if the wind is not very strong.
Stavatti is proud to introduce the SM-100AT Air Tanker. A clean-sheet-of-paper, new design Air Tanker, the SM-100AT will deliver 4,000 gallons of Fire Retardant with greater efficiency and lower cost than its competitors. The SM-100AT has entered accelerated development. h pic.twitter.com/h7qmJJHNFG
Meet David, the captain of Queensland’s new Large Air Tanker Bomber based in Bundaberg.
The 10,000L aircraft is now fully operational and ready to help our firefighters as we head into another bushfire season.#bushfirespic.twitter.com/P7UrmMN6Bf
GLOBAL SUPERTANKER: The VLAT (Very Large Air Tanker) has been hard at work on the #GlassFire (here in Robert Louis Stevenson State Park, Napa County) dropping retardant. pic.twitter.com/Y24bRA8AeL
On June 30 there was a variety of C-130 air tankers working out of Medford, Oregon, and Tim Crippin was able to capture them on celluloid an SD card. It kind of boggles the mind to see three C-130 air tankers at the same air tanker base, all operated by completely different organizations.
There was one privately owned tanker, Coulson’s T-132, and two government-owned. T-116 will eventually, one of these days, way down the road, perhaps, be officially transferred from the Coast Guard to the U.S. Forest Service. And MAFFS 5 is from the Colorado Springs Air Force Reserve base.
Two other MAFFS C-130’s are also activated — one each from Air National Guard units at Cheyenne and Reno.
Tanker 116 at Medford, Oregon, June 30, 2017. Photo by Tim Crippin. Tanker 132 at Medford, Oregon, June 30, 2017. Photo by Tim Crippin.
Above: MAFFS 6 and Tanker 116 at Fresno, July 22, 2017. Photo by Mathew Kirkpatrick.
Mathew Kirkpatrick and L.S. Braun took these photos of four C-130 air tankers at Fresno July 22. Thanks Mathew and L.S.!
MAFFS 4 and 9 at Fresno, July 22, 2017. Photo by Mathew Kirkpatrick. Click to enlarge. Tanker 116 on final approach at Fresno, July 22, 2017. Photo by L.S. Braun. MAFFS 9 on final approach at Fresno, July 22, 2017. Photo by L.S. Braun.
Above: Air Tanker 116, an HC-130H, sprays retardant on a fire near Phoenix, June 22, 2017. Fox 20 Phoenix.
Tanker 116 saw some action today, dropping on a fire near Phoenix that closed Interstate 17. Fox 10 got a pretty fair shot of the drop, but unfortunately the camera operator, perhaps not experienced in covering air tankers, followed the aircraft very closely all the way through the drop so it was difficult to tell which of the two parallel retardant drops was made by T-116. Yes, there were two drops parallel to each other. One looked like it was very wide but the coverage on the ground was very thin. The other was much more narrow and and had better coverage.
The video below shows the drop, and I found it at 2:40:45, but when I first saw it, it was at a different time stamp. The video should begin a few seconds before that point, but it you don’t see it there, check a couple of minutes on each side.
The image below shows the two parallel drops. It is difficult to tell from the video which one was made by the HC-130H.
The two parallel drops can be seen at the lower-right. Screen grab from the Fox 10 video.The news people in the audio have some problems with aircraft ID in that video and at another spot in the same video. At about 2:22:15, there is a second drop and you will hear the news people identifying a lead plane as a Single Engine Air Tanker and what is either an RJ85 or a BAe-146 as a DC-10.
About 2 to 3 minutes after that second drop, a third drop (at 2:25:45) is similar to the second one, and is possibly the same but from a different angle. I am fairly certain this third drop is an RJ85, since you can see the pregnant bulge on the belly.
The very lengthy video goes back to a fire near Los Angeles several times. The image below, a screenshot, show a retardant drop that affected several homes.
Retardant gets dropped on homes at fire near Los Angeles. Fox 20 Phoenix.T-116 is using, not a conventional gravity retardant tank, but a pressurized Modular Airborne FireFighting System rig that is normally only used in military aircraft that have been temporarily drafted into an air tanker role by loading a MAFFS unit in the cargo hold. The compressed air that blows the retardant out of the 3,000-gallon tank sprays it out of a nozzle, breaking the thickened retardant into very small droplets. T-116 and six other HC-130H’s are in the process of being transferred from the Coast Guard to the U.S. Forest Service. If the process is complete by the end of this decade as the agency expects, all seven will have conventional gravity-powered retardant delivery systems and will be operated and maintained by contractors, but owned by the USFS.
Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Tom and Brian. Typos or errors, report them HERE.
The U.S. Forest Service distributed these photos Thursday of air tanker 116 at Redding, California. Normally the aircraft is based at McClellan Air Field in Sacramento, but it ventured north for “aerial firefighter training”.
The agency did not specify if the lawn chairs in the shade are part of the regular equipment inventory on the aircraft.
We shot this photo of U.S. Forest Service air tanker 116, an HC-130H, in Boise on April 20. It was there to deliver the MAFFS unit it has been using so that the Reno National Guard folks can train with it and the other one normally assigned to Reno. After the training the unit will be retrieved by T-116 and hauled back to McClellan in California where that tanker is based.
Two C-130’s and their crews from each of four military bases — Channel Islands, Cheyenne, Colorado Springs, and Reno — are going through their annual training and recertification in Boise this week.
Jon Wright took this photo of Air Tanker 116, which is one of the first of the seven HC-130H aircraft the U.S. Forest Service acquired from the U.S. Coast Guard to be converted to an air tanker.
Mr. Wright said it spent several hours on February 27 and 28 conducting approaches at Mather Airport east of Sacramento.
