DC-10 Air Tanker at KPUB

gkainz

gkainz

Final Approach
Joined
Feb 23, 2005
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Location
Arvada, CO
Display Name
Greg Kainz
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KBJC
News clips of the DC-10 Air Tanker flying out of KPUB and dropping on the Cañon City fire last night sparked this morning's water cooler conversations about logistics of the big tankers (this one and Evergreen's 747) ... which, of course, led to immediate google/wiki wild goose chases for :

  • Max take-off weight of a loaded tanker
  • Max landing weight of a loaded or partially loaded tanker
  • Runway Weight bearing restrictions - suitable airports?
  • Weight of retardant? I assume it's considerably heavier than water, but could only find the weight of the concentrate, and the typical percentage of retardant to water - too much math for this early
  • facilities and equipment to on-load or off-load retardant
  • aircraft suitability/sustainability for mountain fire-fighting conditions
  • SEAT, P-2, P-3, C-130, DC-10, 747 pros/cons - other, better platforms?

Thoughts?
 
Based on my experience loading crop-dusters with load ranges from 400 gal to 800 gal (drops in the bucket compared to DC-10/747 type loads), I would guess that the bottleneck of supporting operations like that would be the physical loading of the 'stuff' - water and/or retardant. I'm guessing the retardant has nasty foaming characteristics, which means you can't just force the stuff into the tanks without some sort of additive, or careful controlled circulation while loading.

Most municipal water systems aren't designed to handle that much volume, either, unless they're pumping directly from a lake somewhere. We would store up 5,000 gal of water and could easily blow through that quantity faster than the airport water supply could replenish it if I had the big plane and more than one of the smaller planes at the same time.

It would be interesting to see the logistics of how they support an operation of that size.
 
saw the DC-10 approaching a fire near Santa Fe last week while we were on the grid at Moriarty. Main issues i've always hear with the big guys is that they can't get as close to the fire due to higher approach speeds, less manueverability and the time it takes to fill them.
 
BJC is the headquarters for the tankers in Colorado. They are set up for high-flow refills. Don't know what the fill rate for the DC10 is, but for the smaller one (c130?) it's 12 minutes. Just enough time to grab a coffee, hit the head, check the weather, and find out where the next drop is.
 
Search Facebook for the Colorado Aviation Photographers group for action photos. She was impressive.

I'd copy them and cross post but tracking down all the required credits and permissions would be ridiculous and some of those folks in that group make a living from their photography.
 
CJones said:
Based on my experience loading crop-dusters with load ranges from 400 gal to 800 gal (drops in the bucket compared to DC-10/747 type loads), I would guess that the bottleneck of supporting operations like that would be the physical loading of the 'stuff' - water and/or retardant. I'm guessing the retardant has nasty foaming characteristics, which means you can't just force the stuff into the tanks without some sort of additive, or careful controlled circulation while loading.

Most municipal water systems aren't designed to handle that much volume, either, unless they're pumping directly from a lake somewhere. We would store up 5,000 gal of water and could easily blow through that quantity faster than the airport water supply could replenish it if I had the big plane and more than one of the smaller planes at the same time.

It would be interesting to see the logistics of how they support an operation of that size.
Click to expand...

Eight minutes to fill the Lockheed Electra's 3000 gallon tank. It doesn't foam. In fact, there's a separate system to add foaming agent after the tank is mostly full, if the firefighters call for it.

The facilities have big tanks to store water and retardant, and big pumps to move and mix them.

I worked for a year on these airplanes and was on fire base for a few weeks with them last year.

The Electra normally grossed at around 113,000 pounds as an airliner or cargo hauler. Our tankers were usually limited to less than that to limit the strain on the old airframes, especially while flying through the turbulence caused by the heat of a fire. Fuel load was about 20,000 pounds, or a bit more than half full. The tank and a full load of retardant weigh considerable more than a load of people and their baggage.

Dan
 
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