Today was a lot of fun. It startd out bad because I did not get up in time for my breakfast but what are you going to do. As soon as I got to work at 850 I had to do pushups with everyone because someone came in after me. I was not happy about that at all, especially because we were not even on the clock yet. It is just a phrase that corey uses as soon as you step foot on AFS property we are on government time...and that is BS. I mean I do not start getting paid when on step on gov soil so why in the world do I have to start working let alone PT. I think that is utter and complete BS.So the beginning of the day did not go off without a hitch but it then got better because half of the Suns and half the Chenas were in this Basic Aviation Safety course. It was put on by one of
the Alaska Fire Specialists (FS) that has been detailed in with Chena. What detailed in means that one of the FS wanted to get an opportunity to work with a hotshot crew this year and it turned out Chena had an open spot on the crew. But this also means that this FS person is now a Chena until there season is over. So this FS guy has been in Alaska Fire Service since 2001 and is very knowledgable about aviation in general. All of the pictures you see here are very non-chalantly taken by myself with my camera phone. Why i say non-chalantly is becuase to me this is not a big deal at all. This picture to your right is a picture of a Convair 580 Airtanker (link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjkUCBrWzhM ) This particular aircraft would be used strictly for retardant drops or "Slurry" drops. This video is of a 580 doing slurry drops on a wildfire. This particular Convair 580 you see here is the only ship like it up here in Alaska. This craft can fly about 270 MPH and drop about 2200 gallons of retardant in a matter of seconds over anywhere from 200-1700 meters distance. This craft is pretty amazing compared to the picture about which is a CL 215 "Duck" I will tell more about this ship later. The Convair is a Turbine engine which allows it to go so darn fast so quickly. This ship is amazing to have on a fire it will saves lives as well as homes. So we got to get right up next to it and ask the pilot any questions we wanted. I know a lot of you would have loved to do that. But for me it is just part of my job. So as I am writing this I am relizing how awesome this job really is. I hope that one day my cousins or your kids will be doing this same job I am. Anyways to be right on top of these planes was pretty awesome.The thing that amazed me the most was the Alaska Smoke Jumper Aircrafts. These ships gave me the chills. Just thinking I could be jumping out of one of those made me quiver and sweat all at the same time. We got to go through the Jumper Base (Which felt very earry) because we are not even allowed ont he carpet in the main building and you must cross the carpet to get to the jump shack. But that is another story also. This part of th tour was quite remarkable because we got to ask Ty Humphrys, alaska Smokejumper, any questions we wanted to about the aircrafts. And really I think that all of us were in such awe of the place and the people that we did not even know what to say. I could go on and on about this but I do not want to boar all of you to death. I want to talk more but I am affraid that it will just be rambling. If you want to hear more just ask me some day and I am sure I will not stop talking about it.
One more thing is about this picture hear. We call it the Red Dragon, but its real name is a Plastic Sphere Dispenser. I will try and find video of it. Take care all and hope you had fun at WLB
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