IR and Smoke

I suspect it has more to do with practicality and risk management than technology. Tactical night missions will always have a higher risk than daytime missions. Loosing an aircraft in the midst of a firefighting mission would seriously complicate things as well as be a loss of lives and assets.

=BF=BD

I tend to agree with this in principle, but when you're ass is on fire (literally), "risk management" is a concept you really can't afford. Sometimes, you need to take the risk and ACT.

IMO.

-mpm

No, the people that order the planes in and the people that fly the planes will use risk management. It's a fact of life. And the reality is that a pilot, copilot, observer and $3,000,000 {number pulled out of my ass) plane are worth more than a few houses.

Seeing through a smoke filled building using IR is completely different to seeing at night time when fighting a wildfire. The room is filled with smoke ONLY and there are no bright flames to blind the viewer. IR glare of wildfire at night would blind the IR viewer if I am not mistaken.

The risk to pilots and navigators is considered too great to be worthwhile. However, we are not that far away from robotic planes that could use GPS, topographic maps and terrain mapping radar to fly autonomously if cost was no object. Some military kit has most of the required properties already but on a smaller scale & very high price.

I expect that picking up water is really hard for a pilot working in the dark, judging height above the waves is notoriously tricky and by comparison finding the hottest spot to dump it on is relatively easy. Fires are instrincally bright in the IR and so easy enough for crude imaging systems working at the right wavelength.

Regards, Martin Brown

Guy Macon wrote in news:gfSdnQi2986Jt6HaRVn snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

Not covered is that powerlines are not easily visible on IR systems. Hitting them does bad things to airplanes and power distribution...

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I think you hit the nail on the head with both of the above coments. I hadn't thought of the water pickup part, but it is obviously a problem in darkness, even with floodlights (visible or IR) on the aircraft. And I agree that a robot would be far more suitable for such danger. Even a remote control system would be good; it might not have to be autonomous.

What got this discussion going at work yesterday was the fact that there is a point in the life of a major wildfire when a bucket of water could put it out, a later point where a helicopter water drop could put it out, a later point where our new DC10 water dropper could, etc. During the recent California wildfires the aircraft were not sitting ready to go with crews sleeping nearby -- the crews had to be called in and the aircraft prepared, causing several hours of delay. Having the planes and helicopters scattered around our dozens of airports loaded and ready to hit fires as they start seems like a good idea, and all the better if they could do so 24/7. If the problem keeping them from flying at night is really the water pickup, they could still drop that first load after having been filled up with a hose at the airport.

A predator drone was just used by the national fire service for 6 months as a research project, with a IR scanner. The biggest problem was the paperwork for the FAA and the FAA's solution to the use of a drone in airspace. They restricted the drone to the immediate airspace above a national park, Yosemite, and closed that airspace to everything else. It spotted one fire early and confimed another small fire. FAA requires a drone to be just as capable as a human pilot in regards to see and avoid, in other words, the FAA is dragging their heels on a national drone policy such as assigning a drone only range of altitudes etc. Drones scare the airlines to death, but general aviation is not so worried, as they are for the most part already dependant on see and avoid and most drones are slow.

The IR camera in my lab (A low cost uncooled raytheon bolometer array) certainly could handle the required dynamic range with few problems from glare.

Since many of the new water droppers are DC10 sized jets a whoopsis at night could be a major problem.

In regards to the fill up problem, most of the fixed wing water droppers have to land on a runway to tank up anyways, but I'd hate to operate a cranky old seaplane or a older helo at night. Newer helos, no problem. Also FAA is gonna have a cow about civilian pilots using NVGs as a primary flight tool.

nice links:

As usual, its more of a regulatory problem then a technology problem.

Steve Roberts

Night flying at very low altitude, in fog and smoke, dropping water to NOT hit ground crews, oy! Ken

mpm snipped-for-privacy@aol.com posted to sci.electronics.design:

Actually that is the conditions when taking just a little time to do so produces the seemingly profound results. In medicine this is called triage, it is part of their training, it is a concept that should be expanded quite a bit.

Wouldn't there be a lot of IR from the fire itself?

Thanks, Rich