Quebec plane fighting L.A. fires grounded after being struck by drone

A Quebec water bomber fighting the Palisades Fire in Los Angeles has been grounded after it collided with a drone flying in restricted airspace, officials said.

The collision left the plane, known as Quebec 1, with a "sizable hole in its wing," said Christopher Thomas, a spokesperson with the California state firefighting agency, Cal Fire.

"Fortunately, they landed the plane without incident," Thomas said in an interview Friday.

The incident downed all aircraft fighting the fire for nearly half an hour on Thursday while officials made sure the skies were clear, he said.

Civilian drones can be fairly good sized, not talking about the little toy drones............

I have a dozen drones that I picked up over the last dozen or so years. Before we moved to an airport, we kept our airplanes at a field that had a model aircraft field right behind it. The only close call we ever had was when we were eating Pizza at the restaurant on the field. We started walking out to our airplane and a large out of control R/C plane dropped out of the sky and was smashed to pieces when it hit the ground right next to our airplane.

The guy who had been flying it came running over almost immediately. The thing originally had a wingspan of around 6 feet and the motor was about the same size as the two stroke engine on my backpack blower. It would have done some damage if it had hit our airplane or even a car. The guy had thousands of dollars invested in it and something went wrong.

So yes, there are some people who have large drones and other types of R/C aircraft. I have just never seen a “drone” style R/C aircraft in person that was larger than the one that our Sheriff Deputy neighbor kept in the back of his Ford Explorer Police Interceptor. This is despite having many friends who fly drones and other model aircraft. It is almost inconceivable that a drone as expensive, large and heavy as one capable of piercing the leading edge of an aircraft as large as the CL-415 would not be registered with the FAA. Such a drone would also be sending out ID signals unless it was operated by someone who was intentionally violating the law.

None of the dozen drones that I own would even make much of a mark let alone pierce the leading edge of a large aircraft. The leading edges of the wings of these planes are designed to fly through heavy hail and obliterate geese and other large birds without substantial damage. For me it just does not add up. I believe that the authorities know exactly what hit this aircraft and who was responsible for it if it was indeed a radio-controlled aircraft. The chances that this was a drone being flown by a kid or even a hobbyist are very small.

How much water can the typical 2 axle pumper pump in an minute?

The fire engines that I worked on pumped between 1500 and 2000 gallons per minute. The CL-415 that had damage to the leading edge of its wing carries up to 1620 gallons or 13,000 pounds of water per load. So, a typical fire engine can deliver approximately the same amount of water with much greater precision every minute.

The CL-415 costs more than $40,000,000. It is one of the airplanes included in the standard edition of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. The program still has a lot of glitches, but you can look all around the outside and the inside of the CL-415 using mouse and keyboard.

Here is a YouTube video showing what it looks like inside and out in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 along with flying from land and water.

https://youtu.be/PTL_u47kNY8

Here is a video showing how to drop water from the CL-415 in MSFS 2024.

https://youtu.be/sMg9DrMrnkc

It makes me wonder if an 8 ounce drone can go through the leading edge of this plane designed to pickup 1600 gallons off the surface of a body of water... what else could cause this type of damage or worse? How about a 20-pound goose or a big eagle, or a big seabird.

We have had some close calls with big birds barely missing our windshield while flying in remote areas. It is pretty obvious that a big bird can go through the plexiglass windshield on a small plane. But I have aways felt fairly confident that they wouldn’t do a lot of damage to the wings even if there was a head-on strike.

I look over a lot of accident reports and have not noticed a situation where a wing struck by a bird caused a crash. After seeing this I suspect that it is possible, but not very probable.

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