"Brian Burger" wrote in message
ia.tc.ca...
C-17s dropping water balloons on fires? Cool...

... but in a Canadian aviation history book I read a while back, they
talked about early aerial firefighting attempts, including dropping paper
bags full of water on the fire. It delivered the water, but the impact of
the bag often sent sparks flying everywhere, spreading the fire while
putting out the centre bit of it.

It seems to me that the C-17+water balloon could have the same flaw. The
advantage would be that you could drop a whole LOT of the things, of
course.

Interesting, anyway. Anyone want to be that with the extra-destructive
fires in California this year there'll be more interest in firefighting
come next budget time in lots of places?

(It was a bad year in BC, too, but we've had worse, and the rest of
Canada seems to have gotten off fairly well...)

Brian.


It is surprising to me that no one has mentioned the CL-215, or CL-415. If
you are not familiar with them, go to
http://www.buffaloairways.com/Aircraft/CL-215.htm or
http://users.chariot.net.au/~theburfs/canad415MAIN.html

The biggest advantage is the super fast round trips, when a source of water
is around. They are truly amazing to see in action.

NC bought a CL-215, a couple years back. Bargain priced at one million,
while they were trading up people to the CL-415.

Another amazing thing is that it took soo long for other states and military
to get permission to go help. That stuff needs to be streamlined.
--
Jim in NC