Helicopter Tour

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That title is misleading. We did not take a helicopter tour, but we took a look at the helicopters based at the Placerville Airport on call for fire duty.

Shiny red helicopter.

My son describes his job as Air Traffic Control in the air. He stays in contact with all the aircraft and ground crews on a fire to make sure that they all stay out of each other’s way. This is the helicopter he has used this fire season and he’s been flying over fires in Idaho, Oregon, and California.

Control panel in the Bell helicopter.

The pilot sits on the right and Matt sits on the left and handles all the radio controls.

Sitting in the back seat of the helicopter.

If there is a trainee in the left seat then Matt stretches out back here.

Two men looking at the engine of the helicopter under an open panel.

We took a look “under the hood” while the mechanic explained how everything works.

Red helicopter with ID number visible.
K Max helicopter from the front.

We walked to the end of the airstrip and saw the K-Max helicopter. It is very narrow and has two rotors that turn opposite directions. I couldn’t visualize how that could work but the pilot turned them by hand for us and showed how one goes under the other as they turn. Now looking at the photo it still doesn’t make sense but I saw it for myself. The advantage of the two rotors is that there is no tail rotor and not having a tail rotor enables 30% more power.

K Max helicopter from the side.

I sat in this one too! I feel like a little kid getting to visit Dad at work.

Water bucket in foreground with KMax helicopter in back.

This bucket is attached by a chain to the K-Max. It has internal parts that enable it to drop partial loads if necessary.

Black Hawk helicopter used for fire fighting and painted white and blue.

At the other end of the runway was the Black Hawk. The pilot explained to us that most of these are painted dark or camouflage colors. She was pleased that the company operating this one paints theirs white and blue and that is much more visible in the fire fighting environment.

Helicopters and support vehicles on the airstrip

The Black Hawk was at one end of the airstrip and the other helicopters were at the opposite end. The red one is the Bell that Matt is in and the K-Max is at the far end. Right now these are stationed in Placerville and were used on the Mosquito Fire. When they go farther away all those support vehicles go with them. Each helicopter has a pilot and a mechanic and there are support vehicles with each.

Red Bell helicopter getting ready to take off.

At 3:00 Matt and the pilot of this one went up while we watched. They were off to the north to check on the Mosquito Fire. It started September 6 and burned almost 77,000 acres. According to InciWeb it is 95% contained and fire crews are still working to mop-up and fell hazardous trees.

I recorded video of them lifting off and I’ll see if I can add a link here for that. Helicopter lifting off. I may not know if this works until I click “publish”.

That speck in the center of the blue sky is the helicopter heading toward the fire.

Knowing the tail number of the helicopter I can see Matt’s flight on Flightradar24.com . This was the path on Monday.