Canadair Water Bombers

[octagon]

Hi guys, this is great!   

A view from the cockpit!
 
What a lesson in coordination!  Four hands, four feet, and six eyes - all working as one!
 
Bombardier Aerospace Montreal, make these aircraft. Canadair made the original versions back in the late 60's using largely left over spare parts of WWII aircraft (Catalina's I think?), although today's version look pretty sophisticated what with the four blade turbo props and hi-tech cockpit.  Over 125 have been sold around the world for fire fighting purposes.

Remarkably, they don't "motor around" on a lake to fill the tanks---they touch down at approach speed, open the fill scoops, add lots of power and the tanks fill in seconds and then they are back to the fire.  There's one scene in the film where you can see the two tank level gauges rapidly go up.

The other neat thing is watching the magnitude of the flight control inputs, especially aileron, as they are maneuvering down low---sometimes the pilot is literally going from stop to stop with the flight control. 

Real flying!

Enjoy,
Rob


http://player.vimeo.com/video/48642618

[Frank v B]

Great video.  Quite jarring when they skip over the water.


The water scoops were developed by Knox Hawkshaw who was a modeller and past president of the Bramalea RC Flyers.  He helped us on the first Ryerson indoor RC flying presentation a few years ago.  Knox scratch-built a 7' span model of the CL 215 with working retracts he designed and machined himself before he even knew how to fly a model airplane.  He won first prize overall with this model at Toledo about 15 years ago.  He loved the airplane.  Knox is in failing health now last time I checked.


Frank