[kellynla]

Well I'm off again today to volunteer in the firefighting.

[kellynla]

ping

[joe fonebone]

Good luck to ya kelly....godspeed

[sure_fine]

good luck on the fight

I seem to remember Shep Smith on FNC lastyear going off about junker planes, he was cussing them all

[umgud]

Well, if we weren’t in Iraq, we could have enough of these planes to kill any fire. Oh, and have health care for the children too.

[rednesss]

Why don't they have a fleet of these?????

[AuntB]

Thank you for volunteering, kellynla.

Duncan Hunter has been behind the scenes working to correct this.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1915663/posts?page=1

[Freeport]

There are also 747 conversion tankers out there by Evergreen. The basic problem is that they are VERY wind / thermal sensitive.

They can’t get as close to a fire as the smaller craft due to the wind sear and thermals from the fire.

These can literally rip the wings off the larger craft which are not designed for the air loads seen.

That’s why a lot of fire fighting aircraft are old bombers, helicopters, or purpose built aircraft; they can take the stress.

It’s not as simple as it looks folks.

[traviskicks]

bookmark

[SunkenCiv]

This op-ed is pretty childish.

the U.S. Forest Service still hasn't certified this plane for use on federal lands. That's because back in 2002 there were two accidents involving planes, contracted by the Forest Service, in which the wings literally fell off. That prompted stricter certification requirements for older planes converted from civilian use (this DC-10 was built in 1974) to firefighting use.