Not that I have any need to prove or disprove anything, but I've never embellished on this board, or in person. If you can refute a single claim I have ever made, then I challenge you to do so.
You questioned striking materials over a fire...the answer is of course materials present a FOD hazard over a fire. If you'd ever been there, that would be obvious. I have hit burning materials, birds, and ingested a lot of smoke...just like anybody else who has ever piloted an aircraft over a fire on a tanker, helitanker, air attack, smoke jump, paracargo, or other mission dealing with wild fire. That anybody would question that is laughable...and far off the topic of this thread. I even saw a Skycrane in Lake City about seven years ago on a fire that ingested a turkey vulture. It was plastered across the intake, spread-eagled. Cost them a new engine.
Then there was the discussion on declaring an emergency when he vehemently argued that having an onboard fire did not necessarily constitute an emergency.
I still do. I have always been consistant in that assertion, based not on conjecture, but on real world experience. Can you make the same claim?
While I have always maintained, with absolute consistancy, that if one needs to make a declaration of priority or an emergency, one should do so, not every case demands it. Further, having experienced cockpit fires, wing fires, engine fires, ground fires, and a host of other such events, none to date have been of a nature that demanded the "declaration" of an emergency.
Several weeks ago I experienced a hydraulic loss in a tanker aircraft under circumstances which, in my judgement, justified requesting a crash rescue truck, and opening a closed runway. I did so, and landed uneventfully. This is the third time in my career I have requested and used the services of a rescue truck on a runway, despite the fact that each time each situation turned into a non-event. I have never hesitated to use the services available to me, when required. I do not, however, believe in blind panic, nor a blanket assertion that all things demand the drama you seem to feel is merited.
Attending a fire for me isn't an emergency. It's my job. A fire in flight may be quickly extinguished, or it may be uncontrollable. Clearly someone flicking a zippo lighter isn't worthy of an emergency descent, while in other circumstances, the mere scent of smoke might be. To suggest that any fire is an emergency is ridiculous.
I maintain now, and have always maintained, that there is no better scent than the smell of smoke in the cockpit.
I suspected then it was the Av person posting under a different name.
That is certainly not the case, but as the burden of proof is on you for making the accusation...prove your case. This would be impossible, of course, as I don't post under other names, but by making a false accusation (again) you have a duty to make good on the verification. Shall you?