A Visit to 10 Tanker

A while back I merited an invitation to 10 Tanker aerial firefighting, it was really amazing to spend the day with their two DC-10s. This was my first time using fill flash to balance the cockpit with ambient light - it was a pure guess on the exposure with limited time, I think it worked... Thoughts?

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/mattshinavar/7​074902127/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/mattshinavar/7​074901723/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/mattshinavar/6​928822990/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/mattshinavar/7​074901575/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/mattshinavar/7​074901965/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/mattshinavar/7​074901903/

Good work! The interiors look good, too!

amazing, never seen one of those. nice shots, especially the drop shot.

Wow I was wondering what a "10 Tanker" could be lol

rick_reno wrote in post #14262617
amazing, never seen one of those. nice shots, especially the drop shot.

That drop was only 6,000 of its ~12,000 gallon capacity, not too shabby. During fire season, wheel down to wheels up is <24 mins to reload the tanks - they even got permission to hot refill/refuel to save time.

I wrote up a thing on their operation; it's pretty amazing what they can do: http://photorecon.net …-drops-on-fires#more-7168

So do they just fly low and dip into a huge water source? How does that work?

Im jealous Matt, nice shots!!

Thanks for the write up and explaining how they do it. For some reason I thought maybe they did have some of the suppressant stored in the bottom of the fulsage because it just didnt look like the actual suppressant holder was big enough!

Had no idea that they brought it out here to Australia for the fire seasons.

Very interesting indeed. Thanks for the shots and article!

Very cool series......

seoul4korea wrote in post #14276108
So do they just fly low and dip into a huge water source? How does that work?

I think my article on photorecon describes the process better than I will here, but basically firehoses attached to the under-fuselage hopper. For max refilling, they use 3 fire hoses fed by a piston powered water pump. 1 hose and a fire hydrant took 45 mins to fill the tanks, for reference.

rammsteinmatt wrote in post #14278599
I think my article on photorecon describes the process better than I will here, but basically firehoses attached to the under-fuselage hopper. For max refilling, they use 3 fire hoses fed by a piston powered water pump. 1 hose and a fire hydrant took 45 mins to fill the tanks, for reference.

Whoa thanks for the run down, I have no clue where I got that from.... I mean don't they have planes that do that?