Thanks to some pre-teen kids playing with matches, according to the newspaper, we had a big blaze in the hills south of Pocatello, the fire is out but the airshow continues! Its all higher terrain, so even at the convinence store where I buy my diesel, you had a semmingly ring side seat of the fixed wing bombers and the big Sky Crane doing its thing.

I had just parked my crane, and went down to the pond a 1/4 mile away to watch a water pickup. The road was signed "closed, for emergency personal only". Using a bit of common sense (I'm a pilot AND a crane operator, it seemed like I could take a quick look as long as I didn't get in the way, that was my story if challanged), I ended up with a clear view of the action. Stopping on the interstate and parking on the shoulder would have been as good and as close. I stayed well clear of his flight path and working area, hundreds of yards, no one else was there at all so I didn't have to use my backup story. What a machine!

You just tell them that's a Sky Crane and I'm a crane operator they need me Awesome work horse aren't they?

Yeah, I was going to act confused as to why they would even question my presence! I had my crane operator cert and pilot cert right next to my drivers license, and was planning to show whoever all three and keep moving closer, dind't even come up

To see that big ugly and noisey flying machine moving so delicately, like a big ass dragonfly, was a middle of the work day treat.

A few years back on the way north to a flyin @ JC I saw one of those ferrying n/b to an Idaho fire and I've seen them within 1/2 mile down in So.Cal. fighting and dropping, it's one hell of a machine.

A good buddy of mine was killed in one a few years back, returning to Oregon from some fires in Florida. Down by Twentynine Palms.. Seem there was a tail rotor prob/seperation. They hit hard.

But, a cool machine nonetheless.

Gump

A good way to find out if you retained anything from your upset training course is to land about a minute after one of these behemoths does a low pass over the runway.

Awesome machines, though.

Costs about 36K per day reserve and an additional 8k per hour when they fly.

Erickson Skycraine builds those things about 3 miles from my house.... Get to see them fly around the valley quite often.... I did my A&P oral and practical in the Erickson hangar when they were building the Crain's for Italy... Got to crawl all over one when doing the practical exam.... It is one big aircraft and quite impressive in it's capabilities..

Edit.....
They can lift over their own weight.... Empty weight is around 19,000 Lbs... can lift 20,000.... the tank can hold 2,650 gallons.... powered by two 4,050 Shaft horsepower turbines....

We got to see the Skycranes in action, and fueling etc on the ramp at Taos whilst at Soaring camps at Taos maybe ~15 years ago. Very impressive, and the crews were VERY professional and courteous about working around sailplanes/GA aeroplanes, what with their immense rotor-wash; not something I can say about some corporate pilots (thought MOST are).

Thanks. cubscout

Never had seen one, but last Wednesday one flew over my house here in Kansas 25 miles south of the downtown airport. Was headed northeast from the southwest, making a lot of noise. Assumed it was just moving from one job to the next.

Pat

Is it strong enough to pick up that big black bus O is riding around in with a magnet???

GOOD one John.... guess we all have a few ideas of where to drop it...............

We were at KCUT this last week-end and Erickson had 1 there for a "Fire-fighting op" going on. It would hold some where in that 2600 gal range and could fill in less than a minute ..... we watched it come and go 3 different times......what a machine.

There are a couple of them based in Corvallis. Someone mentioned above that following one is not a good idea. I can second that thought. It's fun to watch them testing by loading up water in the nearby river and dumping it again. They disappear in the summer fire season and come back to roost for the winter. I always think of dragon flies when they are in the air.
tom

Looks like the one that's was in Spanish fork a week or so ago. I was in South Lake Tahoe right before the forth one year when someone lit a fire right behind the grocery store. I never saw anything deployed so fast. Within 30 minutes there were two of those bombing the fire. They got it out in a few hours. Spent a few hours watching. Those are amazing machines.

Those are incredible machines, especially for 1964 technology. I got to watch them set 60 tower sections on top of bolts while another guy crawled up the ladder with a bag of nuts to bolt them together.

I've forgotten some of the details but during the green knoll fire, the Carson 61 got his bucket too close to Ericksons 64 that was snorkeling out of the pond. The 64 got shook up a little but was fine after an inspection. Both ships were ready to go again in a few hours but the brawl that the incident caused between the Carson & Erickson crews required mandatory time-outs and a certain number of anger management training hours (days) before the crews were alowed back in the air.

I saw a Skycrane set the statue back up on top of the Capitol building here in Austin many years ago. Petty cool...they had tried with a Chinook and failed, piece of cake for the Skycrane.
I once saw a UN operated Mi-26 take off from Entebbe, Uganda. 100 yards away and it felt like the world was coming to an end. It seemed unnatural for something so big to just levitate like that.

cublite wrote:Never had seen one, but last Wednesday one flew over my house here in Kansas 25 miles south of the downtown airport. Was headed northeast from the southwest, making a lot of noise. Assumed it was just moving from one job to the next.

Pat

Pat,

There were likely in the area for a building lift, cooling tower or chiller replacement. We have them here on ocassion.

Kirby

Got to see a skycrane fighting fire through the smoke when I was traveling east over Donner Pass some years ago. I've seen several over the years, some firefighters others hauling some kind of freight. My most memorable was when a skycrane dropped the generals car on the runway in front of the crowd at the Reno air races..tied up the runway while they cleaned up the mess.

littlewheelinback wrote:I once saw a UN operated Mi-26 take off from Entebbe, Uganda. 100 yards away and it felt like the world was coming to an end. It seemed unnatural for something so big to just levitate like that.

Those don't actually fly- they're so ugly the Earth repels them!