During the summer months our quiet little airport is a Fire Fighting Tanker base. This year, since the state is trying to burn to the ground,
has been very busy. We have had an unusual mix of aircraft this year, including 3 BAC146s, 2 C130s and handful of Kings Airs, Turbine Commanders and since we are large enough DC10s. Past years we have hosted only one, this year we have 3!

One of the 10s was out doing maintenance and I had a just enough time to run out and get this with my Iphone.



I added a couple of photos from last week as well.

Enjoy!

Hgr3029 wrote:During the summer months our quiet little airport is a Fire Fighting Tanker base. This year, since the state is trying to burn to the ground,
has been very busy. We have had an unusual mix of aircraft this year, including 3 BAC146s, 2 C130s and handful of Kings Airs, Turbine Commanders and since we are large enough DC10s. Past years we have hosted only one, this year we have 3!

One of the 10s was out doing maintenance and I had a just enough time to run out and get this with my Iphone.

I added a couple of photos from last week as well.

Enjoy!

I imagine that the pilot has to push the nose over pretty hard when the airplane suddenly becomes almost 95,000 pounds lighter, to avoid an unintentional severe pitch-up. I watched the Martin Mars do its demo drops at OSH, which was pretty impressive, and it holds only about 2/3 of the amount the DC-10s hold. I'm sure when McDonnell-Douglas designed the DC-10, no one thought that it would ever become a firebomber!

Cary

Cary

The DC-10-30 Freight liner is pretty impressive. I fly on the Airforce KC-10. Took off out of Fairbanks yesterday with 320,000 lbs of fuel on board and a gross weight of 570K. Offloaded 100K of fuel to another heavy receiver and still flew almost 11 hrs all the way back to the East Coast.