chasingfire.com - A Blog…

Well, to my great surprise I find myself heading out to California as a helicopter crewmember in the morning. I had thought that the unofficial policy of the SWLO helitack crew was to keep folks at home for IA, but I got lucky (somehow) and was in the right place at the right time when the phone rang. Our dispatch called right as our helicopter was inbound from the airport to pick three of us up to do some training, and I had about 30 seconds to decide if I was staying or going.

So… I’m going to the Canyon Complex on the Plumas Nat’l Forest in Quincy, CA. I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures and post them when I get back.

In the meantime, here’s two more pictures from this week’s training at the DNRC’s Clearwater Unit:

So today wrapped up a busy week. I flew in some fashion 4 of the last 5 days, 3 times on 87Mike and once on our aerial observation plane, 12Bravo.

Today on my flight in 12Bravo we did a short version of our normal recon flight over southwest Montana. We started out from Missoula, and headed north, through Potomac up to Seeley Lake, and eventually south to Drummond and Hall before heading back to Missoula. The whole flight was about 2 hours long, and allowed me to see much of the area I’ve spent the past 20 years driving around from the air. I had a good time, although I confirmed my suspicion that I enjoy flying in a helicopter WAY more than I enjoy flying in an airplane.

So, I’m going to enjoy my weekend and get ready for some more training action next week.

Yay! This week our helicopter, N387M, a Bell MT 205/UH-1H (basically a 205 A1++ with a Cobra rotor system instead of a 212 rotor system for you heli folks) arrived from Helena. Monday we did some basic crew training, with a flight in the evening to get the new folks used to working in and around the aircraft. It went smoothly, and we even spotted a small fire burning near the town of Turah by the Clark Fork river. Although we didn’t land on it (the fire was engaged by engines from Missoula Unit DNRC), it was still a great omen for the summer.

Tuesday we did some training for the Missoula Unit engine crews, which involved flying up to Blue Mountain and doing some bucket drops and a crew shuttle flight to get the engine crews used to flying in our helicopter.

Already I’m back to being a happy sasquatch, as I’ve flown twice this week, and any day I get to fly is a good day.

This week begins with training, and my second week of work for the DNRC is underway. I’m really enjoying the work so far, and it looks like it will only get better as the season goes on. The crew is pretty laid back, and so far it seems like everyone will work well together, which is a good sign.

Due to rainy weather we put off bringing helicopter 87Mike over from Helena until next week. So this week has been filled with other random training courses, and some basic organization of our helibase. Next week is guard school (basic fire training) up at Lubrecht Experimental Forest near Potomac, and I’ll likely be helping a bit with that.