Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
avbug said:Probably the biggest issue there isn't the skills, but the willingness to work. We don't see that from certain expeience-backgrounds. Face it, if you were told you have to hand wash your boeing every night before you leave the airport, fly it without air conditioning, and fly it into the conditions that we do, for an indefinite period with little time off, no stability, and that you'll be living out of the back of the airplane for the next five or ten months with five to fifteen minutes notice at any time to go fly, how excited would you be? If it's a radial powered airplane, you'll get dirty, burned, cut, poked with safety wire, and while the days of flying all day and turning wrenches all night are gone, you'll still be carrying tools and getting dirty. Ever spent the evening or morning scrubbing thick burned-on oil and retardant off of a DC-4 or C-130, then hand polishing and/or waxing it yourself?
Try it some time, and then you'll start to get an understanding of why those who live a shirt-and-tie have-everyone-else-do-the-work-for-you background isn't really conducive to flying an air tanker. No slight on anybody, but it's the truth.
Warbird experience isn't much of a shoe-in, and won't help someone upgrade any faster. Especially with the limited movement in the industry.
I don't know where you came up with that, but one couldn't get carded for fire if that were true. VFR-only? Not hardly. Part of every season began in a simulator for me, and part of training was always instrument work. VFR-only in low vis in smoke and haze? Not hardly. My first tanker type ride was a very solid IFR ride to ATP standards (engine-out circling, etc), as well as on the job working demonstrations with drops, emergencies on the drops, and so forth.
Very solid VFR skills are an absolute must, and tankers seldom operate under IFR...except for very long empty repositioning flights. However, I can't recall ever being on a tanker dispatch where having an airline pilot on board would have been of any benifit in any way, shape, or form. Thanks for the chuckle.
Bull. WAY too many holes in that one to let it pass. The USFS has never worked that way.May, 1994, during a ferry flight from Central America to Calgary, I stopped in Billings for fuel. Shortly after landing, a USFS guy came to me and told me that they needed my airplane, a DHC6 to fly smoke jumpers. He was apperently authorized to commander acft if needed.
The per hr that they were offering was by far more than what we made off the things carrying pax. I was all over it, great, making money with a run out 30,000hr twotter was a gift. They had the paper work ready to be signed, crew ready. All I had to do was once around the patch with the pilot to please our insurance and let it go. Last minute, someone finally noticed that the acft wasn't US registered. I said no problem, I'm a TRE for the country of registration, I'll issue a temporary CPL. The big boss said no way, oh well.
I can recall very long positioning flights that would have been impossible with a crew of vfr pilots.
Don't know what planet you've been on, but there were tanker pilots in the 90s with vfr C-130 type ratings. Didn't need a normal type to get carded. Are you gonna tell me that these guys are competent to operate in the IFR environment?
Are you gonna tell me that these guys are competent to operate in the IFR environment?
DC-4 Boy, you smell of "jerk" to me. Military Pilots can't cut it! It sounds like a real case of envy. I've flew Navy A-4's for 5 years through a lot of smoke and fire. I've flown the S2f and also the P2V-5F for two years in the Navy Reserve. We did 30 deg. rocket runs in the P-2 and I flew with a guy who did them a lot steeper. With a little intial coaching I think most Navy Attack or Patrol types could master the techniques of the job. Your lack of knowledge of what military pilots do should encourage you to keep your judgments to yourself. If the criteria is to wash and wax the airplane because the operator is too cheap to get a line boy....then NO!....he is probably too financially unhealthy anyhow.