Tag Archives: Chinook

Firefighting Chinook – Just Not Now

We had a few helicopters show up in the region during the firefighting season.  One was at Arlington and that was a Boeing Chinook owned by Billings Flying Service.  Based in Billings MT, they provide a variety of aviation services including this helicopter for firefighting duties.  It was parked on the ramp at Arlington and had a logo on the airframe to show its home base as well as a text logo on the fuselage near one of the navigation lights that referenced the Police song, Roxanne.

I would love to have seen it fly but the weekend when I was up there, it was just parked and work really gets in the way of having fun with aviation on weekdays.  The paint scheme was really cool and it was fitted with an internal water system along with a snorkel for picking up water when needed.  I would love to see this in action but that hasn’t happened yet and there is something very unfortunate about getting to see firefighting operations underway since it is a sign that bad things are happening!

Missed One Chinook But Got Another

During our day out in Portsmouth, we had lunch at a very nice pub by the harbor.  We sat outside enjoying the various boats coming and going.  I popped inside before leaving and, when I came back outside, Nancy had to inform me that, as soon as I went inside, three helicopters had flown by.  There had been on Chinook with two smaller, unidentified, types flying formation with it.  Needless to say, I was rather disappointed but such is life.

A while later, as we were walking along the sea wall at Southsea, the sound of rotors returned.  The nice thing about Chinooks is that they don’t really sneak up on you.  I had ample time to switch to a longer lens and set up the camera for something more appropriate for a helicopter (although the Chinook rotor rpm is so low, it still is not ideal).  Sure enough, it came right towards us and flew through the harbor entrance and right by.  A nice surprise.  It then flew out to sea and I wondered whether it was going to return.  Instead, it appeared to be hovering over one of the forts out in the Solent.  That would have looked great from closer up.

Chinook Welcome Flyby

The presence of JBLM south of Tacoma means that there are plenty of military helicopters operating in the Seattle area.  I got lucky late in one day when a Chinook called up on approach.  They weren’t landing at the field but just flying through.  I got a good view of it as it came in to the field.  They then turned downwind to depart providing a background view as a local JetRanger came in to land.  I am not a big fan of the sand finish used on the Chinooks these days but they do pick up the light.

What Aviation Can I Shoot From Home?

The answer to that question is clearly “not much” but it isn’t zero.  We do get things flying overhead here on a regular basis.  We are on the approach to SeaTac for some arrivals and we do sometimes get Boeing Field traffic too.  It’s a rarity when there is something interesting and I am ready, though, so that doesn’t provide a lot.  However, I did recently have a T-38 from Boeing’s chase fleet come over the house.  It was a bit high but it was enough to get me out in the driveway!

We have also had helicopters fly over on occasion.  An Army Chinook came past one time while and Navy Seahawk was another transient.  In each case, I only heard them shortly before they arrived so grabbed the camera while at my desk and shot through the window.  That is not a good plan but it was all I had available at the time.  These can count as my lockdown at home aviation projects!

National Guard Chinook

AE7I7409.jpgSan Carlos Airport is home to the Hiller Aviation Museum.  In times past they used to have an event called Vertical Challenge.  It was a big gathering of all things rotary winged.  Sadly, the challenge ended but the current team is trying to reestablish something similar.  They have a smaller gathering called Heli Fest and I went along to shoot with the team for this year’s event.  It was a normal day for admissions to the museum but the arrival of a lot of different airframes provided a lot more to see so the visitor numbers were significantly up.

B11I6830.jpgThe biggest visitor was a Boeing CH-47F Chinook for the National Guard unit at Stockton.  They carried out a few passes before landing.  Since the airframe is a little large and has quite a rotor diameter, they shut down on the ramp and were towed in to their parking spot.  Once in place, they were open t visitors to come and look through the helicopter and talk to the crew.

AE7I6776.jpgNo surprise that there was a steady stream of people checking out the Chinook during the course of the day.  It is a great looking machine and the crew was busy answering questions throughout the day.  When things were wrapping up, they taxied out and took off.  A flyby was a necessity prior to going home.  The Chinook is a very fast helicopter to the pass was pretty zippy!

Firefighting Helicopters

C59F6996.jpgWhen someone in Chicago needed to lift something that was too heavy for the S-58T fleet of Midwest, there was a good chance that CHI Aviation would get the job. When I first worked with them, they were known as Construction Helicopters but their scope has grown a lot and so the name has been changed. Whether it was the S-61 or the Super Puma, some big payloads could be taken up. I thought I wouldn’t see much of them once I moved to California. I was wrong.

AU0E1362.jpgThey have acquired some surplus CH-47 Chinooks from the US Army and a number of them are currently based in California working on firefighting contracts. Some of them were deployed to help fight the Wragg Fire and I had a chance to go hunting for them while I had some free time up there recently. I had no idea where they were going to be operating. A look on Flightradar24 showed that there was a lot of activity in the vicinity of the fires including fixed and rotary wing assets but I was heading off with little real idea what I was looking for.

C59F7120.jpgI took Route 128 that goes up through the hills and past Lake Berryessa. This road had been shut at one point when the fire first got established but had since been reopened. Even so, as I drove across, there were fire appliances from all over the state in any turn off I passed. There was also an orange streak on the road which, I assume, came from a fire retardant drop of some sort. As I came by the lake, I didn’t see any aerial activity. There were plenty of boats on the lake so I figured that they weren’t picking up water from there. It later turned out that was a false assumption.

C59F7081.jpgI dropped down from the hills and came around a bend in the road to find myself facing a Chinook coming in to pick up water from the river beside me. Fortunately, I was able to pull off right there. For once, I was well prepared. I had figured that I might see something and need to have the camera ready so I had fitted the lens and set everything up before starting the hunt so I grabbed the camera and started shooting.

C59F6823.jpgThere was a pair of the Chinooks coming in for water along with a Sikorsky Black Hawk. All of them were using Bambi Buckets to get water from the river before heading back to the fight. I got a bunch of shots from the road before things quietened down. Other than an Army Chinook without a bucket that seemed to be coordinating things (and marked with purple markings over its normal camo), nothing was moving. A guy came up from the river with his fishing gear in hand and suggested I go down to where he was to get a good shot.

I did as suggested but, of course, nothing was happening now. A couple of times I wandered back to the car only to hear something coming over and rushed back. Sadly, these were flights to the lake rather than the river. Finally I did get lucky and got a few shots from river level of someone picking up a load. Then it went quiet again so I headed off for a while on an idea that proved fruitless.

C59F6754.jpgMy return brought me back past the same spot and things were happening again. This time there was a Huey involved and he was running a lot of lifts. He also was loading from a slightly different part of the river. One of the Chinooks still showed up but at the original spot so I had to make my choices. Eventually, I needed to head back so started off. However, the Chinook and another Huey put in another quick appearance so I stopped for them and then finally headed back.

This was a totally impromptu trip and I ended up getting a lot of time with the CHI Chinooks as well as some other types too. Obviously, it is not great that they are needed with these fires raging but it was impressive to see the crews at work providing such a valuable service. Now I want to see them again, hopefully in a slightly more controlled environment! I wrote a piece for GAR which you can see here.

Desert Pink Jets (and not jets)

wpid13510-03-0303.jpgMy friend, Ben, put some pictures on Facebook of a Jaguar being restored in Arizona that is being painted in the desert pink colors that were used during the first Gulf War.  I worked a little on Jags in my days at BAe and have always thought it was a cool jet.  It is nice to see one showing up in restoration over here.  It triggered a discussion between a few of us about the colors that were used at that time.

wpid13500-02-0701.jpgIn 1991, I went to Mildenhall for the, then annual, Air Fete.  The Air Fete went away a while back and now it looks like Mildenhall itself will follow into the realms of “once upon a time”.  However, there was a time when the Air Fete was possibly the premier military air show in the UK.  For a while it was a regular feature of my year.  (The weekend before my university finals started was I a) studying hard at college or b) at Mildenhall for the show?  I was studying aeronautical engineering so surely it counted?)

wpid13494-02-0601.jpgThis was the first big show after the end of the war in the gulf and a lot of the aircraft that were on display were pretty much unchanged.  This included the desert colors that had been applied in a hurry along with mission markings and less official images that the crews had painted.  One of the Tornados on display showed how quickly things had been done.  They had painted the jet with the flight refueling probe still attached which, when removed, left a grey patch amongst the pink on the front fuselage.

wpid13502-02-0801.jpgNot everything was pink.  The tankers that went over had already adopted a hemp color in the previous years so they were already quite well prepared.  Also, a Chinook was on display that had a mottled finish that was supposedly the result of being used for special forces missions.

wpid13508-03-0302.jpgNeedless to say, most of these colors were pretty quickly removed as the aircraft where cleaned up after their return and put through some deeper maintenance and the rapid war modifications either removed or upgraded to a clear condition.  (Lots of mods were done under a “war only” approval.  They were less likely to kill you then the opposition but hadn’t gone through the full clearance process.  They weren’t approved for peacetime use until a more thorough evaluation had been done.  Of course, we had a fair bit of testing experience to do the clearances with given how much they had flown in theater!)

wpid13498-02-0604.jpgThe pictures are scanned from old negatives so not fantastic but they are a snapshot of an interesting time!

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Stead Field National Guard

wpid12623-QB5Y7489.jpgQuite a few years ago, I was on a visit to NAS Fallon with my friend Richard. (You can check out his work at http://www.aviationimaging.com/ and I recommend you do.) Another buddy, Paul, was also along and the day after we were at Fallon, Paul had arranged a visit to the National Guard facility at Stead Field, north of Reno. (Paul’s work can be found at http://skippyscage.com/) This base operated a variety of helicopters including Chinooks, Black Hawks and Kiowas. It was also once the home of CH-54 Tarhes. It was in looking for pictures of the CH-54 that is preserved there that I came across the rest of the shots from that day.

wpid12635-QB5Y7598.jpgI took one Chinook shot that morning that I have used a number of times but the rest of them had kind of been forgotten. We had a great time wandering through the hangars seeing what was ready for use or undergoing maintenance. The high point of the day was that a Chinook was launching and we were allowed out onto the ramp outside the fence to be in place when the Chinook taxied out and took off.

wpid12637-QB5Y7610.jpgAs it happened, the Chinook pulled up into the hover and stayed there for quite some time. Since I had time, I progressively lowered my shutter speed to try and get more rotor blur on the famously slow turning Chinook rotor. I had just got as low as I could go when he suddenly transitioned to forward flight. I was at totally the wrong shutter speed and ended up with some parallax issues as he flew by but it was all good.

wpid12629-QB5Y7543.jpgThe Chinook obviously features here a bit but I wanted to share some of the other helicopters that were there that day. It was fun to see some shots that I had forgotten about long ago.

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