Aviation Week & Space Technology cover, 20-27 Dec 2010

The cover picture of T40 (BAe-146-200) doing proving drops at MSO won Second Place Commercial in AW&ST's annual photo contest.

Insert is Neptune BAe-146 Airtanker Captain Pete Bell at YSU  (Summerside, Prince Edward Island, Canada) conducting acceptance trails.

HAI meeting on Public-Use Aircraft

Helicopter Association Intl (HAI) held a January 20 industry forum in Alexandria, Va. to address questions and issues related to public-use helicopter operations. The meeting was in response to recent NTSB recommendations to FAA and the U.S. Forest Service as a result of its investigation into the 2008 crash of a Carson Helicopters-operated Sikorsky S-61. As part of its probable cause into the accident, NTSB issued 21 recommendations to FAA, including strengthening oversight of public-use aircraft.

NTSB: Public Use Aviation’s ‘Orphan’

Helicopter weight miscalculations started chain that led to the accident, which killed nine firefighters.

By Andrew D. Parker, Managing Editor

While acknowledging the role of lax oversight by maintenance inspectors, FAA and the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. National Transportation Board has placed much of the blame for a 2008 crash of a Sikorsky S-61 on the operator—Carson Helicopters. During a public meeting Dec. 7 coinciding with the release of the accident’s probable causes, board members touched on the many complicated aspects of the two-year investigation, which involved 23 NTSB staff members, more than five percent of the organization’s total workforce of around 400 people.

The S-61 went down shortly after taking off on Aug. 5, 2008 in the mountains near Weaverville, Calif. Nine people died in the crash, including seven firefighters, and four others on board were seriously injured. Carson was operating the helicopter under a U.S. Forest Service contract.

NTSB concluded that the main causes of the crash were Carson’s “intentional” understatement of the helicopter’s empty weight; altering of the power available chart (to exaggerate lift capability); and practice of using above minimum specification torque figures in performance calculations, which resulted in the pilots overestimating the load capability of the S-61. Also cited was “insufficient oversight” from FAA and the Forest Service. Contributing factors included the flight crew’s failure to recognize the performance discrepancies during two departures prior to the accident flight.

Accompanying the probable causes are a series of 11 recommendations to FAA and 10 to the Forest Service. See the full list here.

After an overview from investigator-in-charge Jim Scheuster, board members heard presentations covering helicopter performance, operations, the role of oversight, seats/restraints and fuel filtering.

At the center of the investigation are a series of “altered” performance charts and records that show the pilots were using incorrect calculations for weight, resulting in a payload that closer resembled emergency takeoff procedures. NTSB staff explained that the accident helicopter’s actual weight was 13,845 lbs, but a Carson-supplied chart identified it as 12,408 lbs—a difference of 1,437 lbs. This difference led the pilot to miscalculate the hover out of ground effect (HOGE) limitations of the helicopter. Using the correct weight number, the maximum HOGE weight of the S-61 was 18,445 lbs, and the allowable weight was 15,840 lbs. Due to the altered charts, the helicopter took off at a total weight of 19,008 lbs—more than 500 lbs over the maximum HOGE weight. Essentially, the S-61 was operating in emergency takeoff conditions.

Board member Robert Sumwalt felt that the “most appalling” aspects of the accident are Carson’s intentional understatement of the operational figures and falsification of maintenance documents, and “the lack of government oversight to this problem.”

Board member Mark Rosekind asked how staff determined that the falsified charts were “intentional vs. inadvertent.” He noted the importance of this question because it represented “the beginning of the chain” of missteps that led to the crash. NTSB staff replied that a few discrepancies uncovered were “beyond coincidence,” including the altered weight documents and supplemental type certificate (STC) modifications that were reported installed, when they were not. Carson also directly acknowledged that some of the weights were not correct, according to staff. Scheuster added that investigators found eight of the 10 S-61s in use at the time with the same understatement of weight, leading them to conclude that it was not an inadvertent mistake.

Rosekind asked for further specifics in regards to the claim of intentional tampering. “Somebody took the 2.5-minute chart and pasted it over the 5-minute chart,” replied Scheuster. “You had to physically alter the chart.”

While Chairman Deborah Hersman noted that the report does not “let the pilots off the hook,” staff members stated that the crew “does not jump out as the principal causal factor in this accident.” Rosekind added that if the pilots “had the correct info, they would have been doing the right thing.”

While much of the discussion revolved around Carson’s role in the accident chain, NTSB also slammed oversight from FAA and contractor U.S. Forest Service. Hersman asked whether the FAA has the appropriate resources to catch the errors noted in the lead-up to the S-61 crash. She pointed out that while NTSB staff does not have the eye of a maintenance inspector, it took several weeks to discover the discrepancies, which were not uncovered by FAA investigators. “This is a wake up call for sure, there were some missed opportunities, but I’m not sure they’re in position to catch those opportunities today, even if they were looking for them,” Hersman said.

Others on staff and the board felt the mistakes could have been discovered prior to the accident. “Better oversight would have deterred these anomalies in the first place,” asserted Sumwalt. “There is a strong case for how better oversight could have deterred these falsifications and irregularities, as well as caught them,” he continued, adding that the board’s recommendations would seek to put further deterrents into place.

“What is the purpose of federal oversight?” Hersman asked, launching into a comparison of aviation to the bus and truck industry. In the aviation industry, “it’s like oversight among friends or something … because they’re not looking for wrongdoing, they’re just looking to check the box that the thing they were supposed to do is done.” In the truck/bus industry, there are “hundreds of thousands of more carriers of magnitude than in the aviation industry and fewer inspectors. They can’t possibly inspect everyone, and most entrants into the truck and bus industry don’t ever get an oversight activity.”

But in aviation, “you actually have to get oversight before you get an operating certificate. That’s great, but in these other industries we don’t have as many resources dedicated to oversight, but you know what they do? They try to get the bad actors out, and they have to focus on the people who do the wrong things and people who are trying to make things appear they shouldn’t.”

In almost all of NTSB’s investigations where a “bad actor” has been identified, Hersman continued, “it’s really incumbent on the oversight activity to ferret that out.” She asked whether FAA is really equipped to catch the bad actors. “Are they resourced to do that, and do they have clear enough areas of responsibility?”

Hersman used an analogy to describe how the oversight issue related to public-use aircraft, a topic that came up multiple times during the meeting: “Public-use operations have been made an orphan by the aviation industry, like they have no parent and no one wants to be responsible for them. And this orphan, everyone says when they make a mistake or when something goes wrong, ‘that’s your job. That’s your responsibility. You should have looked at that.’”

NTSB’s accident report seeks to point out that “we have some people who can be parents here, and be adults, and take the responsibility for this child,” she continued. People who work in public use, like firefighters, “are expecting no less oversight from their federal government and their inspectors than you or I are when we get on a commercial airplane and scheduled service,” Hersman said. “They should also get the same service that we get. The regulations might not be exactly the same, but if there are standards out there, by gosh we should make sure they comply with them.”

The chairman noted that at the end of the day, NTSB is saying: “Take responsibility, divide up the responsibilities—take custody of this child and figure out what your visitation agreement’s going to be, and who’s going to do what part of the job on which day … and make sure it doesn’t fall through the cracks.”

Rosekind added that Hersman “nailed this public use stuff with her metaphor, but the challenge clearly is [moving] from metaphor to action here, because everyone who has responsibility is not stepping up. While everyone likes to point the finger elsewhere, the real challenge is going to be to figure out what concrete actions can be recommended and taken, to make a difference.” He noted accident trends in the helicopter EMS industry. “People have sure avoided the responsibility for a long time,” Rosekind said.

Critics say fire retardant's impact on animals, plants, too great

By Dana M. Nichols

December 30, 2010

Record Staff Writer

COLUMBIA, California - The red liquid pumped into air tankers every summer at a base here and at another in Stockton is coming under increasing scrutiny and might in the future be banned from use if fire-retardant critics have their way.

After more than seven years of legal battling, a federal judge in Montana in July ordered the U.S. Forest Service to do a full environmental impact study on how to prevent the harm that retardant does to species such as steelhead and salmon when the chemical gets dumped into waterways.

No one disputes that the main chemical in retardant - a form of chemical fertilizer - kills fish and rare plants if it gets into streams.

But federal fire officials say spills into creeks are rare and that retardant is a valuable tool that saves human lives, forests and property.

"It decreases the fire's intensity and slows the advance of the fire," said Jennifer Jones, a Forest Service employee and public affairs specialist for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.

In steep, difficult-to-access terrain, air drops of retardant can buy time while ground crews try to reach an area to cut fire lines, Jones said.

It is particularly valuable, Jones said, that retardant works even once the water in it evaporates.

"It actually is effective for longer than water. And we have studies that show that."

Critics of fire retardant dispute that, saying there is no evidence of benefits from the approximately $100 million a year spent on buying and dropping retardant.

"As one researcher put it, fire retardant is faith-based firefighting," said Andy Stahl, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, the group that sued the Forest Service over the issue.

"Fire retardant is generally used where there are fire-retardant bases, and fire retardant bases are built where there is federal land," Stahl.

As a result, a state like California that has ample federal land has many more bases and uses three times as much fire retardant each year as Texas, but without improving the performance of state and federal crews in knocking down wildfires, Stahl said.

Jones said California and Texas are not comparable because of differences in terrain and forest cover.

The Columbia Air Attack Base was originally a Forest Service base but has been administered by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection since 1966. That base pumps an average of 600,000 gallons of retardant a year but can ramp up to 120,000 gallons a day in the event of a large fire.

The U.S. Forest Service also has a retardant base at Stockton Metropolitan Airport that can pump retardant into large air tankers.

Jones said work has already begun on the environmental study, and that a draft should be available for public comment by spring.

The Forest Service has until the end of 2011 to complete the study and come up with limits on retardant use adequate to protect fish and plant species.

Contact reporter Dana M. Nichols at (209) 607-1361 or dnichols@recordnet.com. Visit his blog at recordnet.com/calaverasblog.

Fire retardant review

To follow developments as the U.S. Forest Service studies aerial fire retardants and considers restrictions on their use, go to www.fs.fed.us/fire/retardant.

Air power on the cheap

Dec 9th 2010 | The Economist

JET fighters may be sexy in a Tom Cruise-ish sort of way, but for guerrilla warfare—in which the enemy rarely has an air force of his own—they are often the wrong tool for the job. Pilotless drones can help fill the gap. Sometimes there is no substitute for having a pilot on the scene, however, so modern air forces are turning to an old technology: the turboprop.

So-called light-attack turboprops are cheap both to build and to fly. A fighter jet can cost $80m; the 208B Caravan, a light-attack turboprop made by Cessna, costs barely $2m. It also costs as little as $500 an hour to run when it is in the air, compared with $10,000 or more for a fighter jet. And, unlike jets, turboprops can use roads and fields for take-off and landing.

It is not only jets that light-attack turboprops can outperform. Armed drones have drawbacks, too. The Reaper, made by General Atomics, can cost $10m or more, depending on its bells and whistles. A manned turboprop can bomb a target for a third of the cost of using a drone, according to Pat Sullivan, the head of government sales at Cessna.

There are strategic considerations, too. Piloted light-attack planes do not require the technical expertise and support systems needed by drones, but offer complete operational independence. And being lower-tech than many drones, they are less subject to restrictions on exports.

They are also better, in many ways, than helicopters. To land a chopper safely in the dirt requires sophisticated laser scanners to detect obstacles hidden by dust thrown up by the downdraught of the rotors. Such dust makes helicopter maintenance even more difficult than it is already. Maintaining turboprops, by contrast, is easy. According to Robyn Read, an air-power strategist at the Air Force Research Institute near Montgomery, Alabama, they can be “flown and maintained by plumbers”. Thrush Aircraft, a firm based in Albany, Georgia, claims that the Vigilante, an armed version of its crop-dusting plane that costs $1m, can be disassembled in the field with little more than a pocket screwdriver.

Turboprops are also hard to shoot down. Air Tractor, another firm that makes crop-dusters, branched out into warplanes last year. One reason was that a fleet of 16 unarmed versions of its aircraft had been used by America’s State Department to dust South American drug plantations with herbicide—an activity that tends to provoke a hostile response from the ground. Despite being hit by more than 200 rounds, though, neither an aircraft nor a pilot has been lost.

In part this is because of the turboprops’ robust design, and in part because Air Tractor’s fuel tanks have rubber membranes which close around bullet holes to slow leaks. Add extra fuel tanks, which let the plane stay aloft for ten hours, six 225kg precision-guided bombs and more than 2,000kg of missiles, rockets and ammunition for two 50-calibre machineguns, and you have the AT-802U, a formidable yet reasonably cheap (at $5m) warplane.

Light-attack aircraft now also sport much of the electronics used by fighter jets. The MX-15, an imaging device made by L-3 WESCAM, a Canadian company, allows a pilot to read a vehicle’s licence plate from a distance of 10km (6.2 miles). It is carried by both the AT-802U and the AT-6, a top-of-the-range light-attack plane made by Hawker Beechcraft.

Not surprisingly, countries with small defence budgets are investing in turboprops, including Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco and Venezuela. And the biggest military establishment in the world also recognises the value of this new, old technology. America’s air force plans to buy more than 100 turboprops and the navy is evaluating the Super Tucano, made by Embraer of Brazil.

In aerial combat, then, low tech may be the new high tech. And there is one other advantage that the turboprop has over the jet, at least according to Mr Read—who flew turboprops on combat missions in Cambodia in the 1970s. It is that you can use a loudspeaker to talk to potential targets before deciding whether to attack them. As Winston Churchill so memorably put it: “When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.”

Wilfire News of the Day (free subscription)

For any of you who like to keep up with international wildfire news, you can subscribe to my free Wildfire News Of The Day e-newsletter, which a number of folks on this list (including Walt) already receive.

Mike Archer
Publisher/Wildfire Consultant
Firebomber Publications
P.O. Box 128
Glendora, CA 91740
Phone:   (626) 915-4779

FAX:      (626) 915-4779

E-Mail:    blocked::mailto:marcher47@firebomberpublications.com

Website: http://www.firebomberpublications.com/

Column:  www.military.com/Opinions/0,,Archer_Index,00.html

Firebomber Publications donates 50% of net profits to organizations that support the families of injured and fallen firefighters.

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Think positive.

Other than "Mo' money, honey." what do you think is the greatest single opportunity for increasing the effectiveness of aerial wildfire suppression?