| Felipe Garcia |

Yesterday morning the Gladiator Fire was reported near Crown King. What started as a structure fire in private property has extended to over 1300 acres and is threatening the town of Crown King, as well as other historical sites in the area. For those that didn’t hear, Crown King was barely saved during the 2008 Lane II Fire. Crown King is currently under a mandatory evacuation.

Two airtankers, T-06 and T-07, both P2V Neptunes operated by Neptune Aviation were already  in Prescott and called to action.

Things did not start well, Tanker 6 had issues on Saturday and didn’t fly during the afternoon (I was at the airport watching them), and the local newspaper later reported the plane had a hydraulic leak in one of the engines.

Today I saw (and heard) the planes flying in all morning, and as soon as I was free I grabbed my equipment and headed out to the airport. Even though the heat haze was rolling in, I was able to get some shots. Tanker 6 was parked on the main ramp, not the USFS ramp, and wasn’t flying. I discovered that reinforcements had arrived: Tankers 45 and 55 (flown by Neptune and Minden, respectively) had already joined the effort. I left as I had other things to take care of.

Later in the afternoon I got word from a friend that Tanker 43 had been flying out of Prescott since mid afternoon. I went to the airport once again, not before seeing Tanker 07 flying low over the parking lot as it received landing clearance.

At the airport, I soon realized the magnitude of the response: Tanker 6, still parked at the ramp, joined by 45 and 12. Tankers 7, 43 and 55 flying around. Also, I spotted a Sikorsky Skycrane parked at the west ramp, and soon after, a helicopter with a weird callsign reported on the radio, and I saw a Chinook on the distance. It turned out to be a civilian Chinook operated by Columbia Helicopters. Also, I saw that ground crews from California were already at the fire center, ready to reinforce the local firefighters. Unfortunately the light wasn’t good for taking photos from the usual spot, but I still got a couple good shots.

So as of two hours ago, the majority of the current airtanker fleet on contract with the US Government is stationed in Prescott, hopefully their efforts will save Crown King, once again.

I have plans to go tomorrow morning to see how things look like at the airport.

Current line up

Large Air Tankers

-6,7,12,43,45 (P2V Neptunes, Neptune Aviation), 55 (P2V Neptune, Minden Aviation)

Helicopters

-1 Chinook, Columbia Helicopters

-1 Sikorsky Skycrane, unknown operator

Recently arrived crews from California

-Kearn Co FD (Rio Bravo Hotshots)

-BLM CA-CND (Kearn Valley Hotshots)

[Show as slideshow]

Well, after not posting anything for almost 2 months, I can say that I now have free time. After 4 weeks of absolute hell now I have literally nothing to do, so I’m going to start writing.

Finally ordered an HP 15C Limited Edition. After planning on doing that since they announced it, I finally got around to ordering it. It is a pretty high number one (20678), which is kinda expected, considering it’s been out for a while, and a lot of people ordered 2-3 copies.

After using RPN for about 2 years, (and having the iPod emulator for about the same amount of time) I finally got one. I am really happy that this has happened.

To add some background to this, my dad got a 12C back in the late 80s, it was a company issue calculator that accompanied him for 30 years while he worked for that company and he still keeps it. This being an original 12C, it has the 3 SR44 batteries that he has only replaced once (in 2001), the fake leather case is all cracked and the calculator has some scratches, but it works fine.

The only thing I see as a partial disappointment is the keyboard, as I thought they were going to keep the original shiny keys instead of the ones used on the 35S, but I was wrong. Now that I think about it, I don’t even know if the current 12C’s have the original keyboard, I know the 12C Platinums don’t.

Pictures to come tomorrow

Saturday March 10th, NAF El Centro hosted their 2012 airshow. This was my first ever Naval airshow, and it didn’t disappoint.

The show opened with the Navy Leapfrogs parachuting team, launching out of one of their C-2 Greyhounds, followed by the National Anthem and some civilian performers, including Tim Weber. A different civilian performer was a jet-powered International Transtar 4300, which fired up the afterburners on the runway while one of the Pitts was flying over. Then it was time for the military performers, which included two F/A-18E from the VFA-122 “Flying Eagles”, one of them flying solo, demonstrating the capabilities of the Super Hornet and another one doing a heritage flight with a CAF Bearcat. Then the Navy Longhorns, out of NAS Fallon did a SAR demonstration with one of their MH-60S Knighthawks. Finally, the Blue Angels performance started with the C-130 demo (which wasn’t the regular Fat Albert plane, it was a plain USMC C-130), and the Blue Angels themselves.

The civilian performers were flying too far away from the crowd to make good photos possible, but the performances could still be enjoyed. And the heritage flight was a cool performance too. The Blue Angels made a last minute change and swapped airplane 5 for 7, one of the twin-seaters, and the mechanics towed 5 away. I was confused for a minute, as the mechanics were hooking up the tow truck while doing the usual choreography, and I didn’t know if that was part of the show or not.

Also remarkable were the Imperial Stormtroopers, which I was told were the Imperial County (or Imperial City) police, complete with Darth Vader and everything.

One thing that I was very disappointed with was the behavior of some visitors, some of them from other continents, who tried to sneak out of the designated public or media boxes to go closer to the action in multiple occasions.

Lastly, I would like to thank everyone at NAF El Centro, military and civilian, who made this show happen (this includes the CHP officers, who manually directed traffic while everyone made their way out of the base, preventing a chaos like that one at Luke last year)

Yep. The El Centro Airshow will start in some 31 hours or so. There’s a report and 3 classes between me and the trip, and I should be packing, or sleeping, but we’re still compiling that report.

The good news is that due to DST I will gain an hour on the way to CA but I won’t lose an hour on the way back.

In short, today was a blast. Coolidge turned out to be way better than I thought, with an An-2 and a Spitfire replica (more on that later), among others. One of the Super Corsairs came in too.

On the “regular” side of the operations, N121TG was parked at the IAR ramp, N133HP is now inside the “yard”, in line with N131HP and N131FF. N138FF is gaining more parts every day and it seems like it will be flying this year as somebody else mentioned to me. The DC-7 was moved to a location close to where N133HP was.

Almost no signs whatsoever of the AH-1 that crash-landed there this week, other than the marks from the skids dragging.

Casa Grande, great turnout, great planes. Remarkable planes include N202LD, a Canadian Car Harvard that has been modified to resemble a North American P-64. A P-51H was there too, 2 Super Corsairs, and lots of Cessnas and Homebuilts.

But, Tanker 121, the one airworthy PB4Y / P4Y Privateer was there. Those that know me well know how long I’ve been chasing that one plane. It was surrounded by other planes and clutter but I was able to get a few angles.

Pics and more text coming soon

Well, the month hasn’t even started and my calendar is almost full.

3/3 : Monthly Coolidge Fly-In
3/3 : Cactus Fly-In
3/10 : Phoenix/Mesa Gateway Open House
3/10 : NAF El Centro Airshow
3/10-3/16: Arizona Wildfire Academy

I’m hoping that everything works on my favor to attend both the Coolidge and the Cactus, given that they are only 29 miles (~50 minutes) apart, the 50 minutes is due to the ridiculous speed limits on those rural highways and farm roads, which only the non-locals seem to follow.

Won’t make it to IWA, since I will be in California covering El Centro for PHX Spotters

The Wildfire Academy is not a big event, but there’s plenty of trucks, emergency vehicles and command posts from several fire agencies all within walking distance of my apartment. Also there is information that that week one of the P2V Neptune firefighting planes will be flown to the Prescott Fire Center at Love Field Muni and will be deployed there for the firefighting season.