The cavalry has returned to Penticton. It arrived in the first week of June.
And although it's not quite as big (or as loud) as it's been in previous years, it's no less capable. Indeed, it's apparently quite a bit more so.
At least that's the word from Abbotsford-based Conair Aerial Firefighting.
For more than a half century, Conair has supplied fixed-wing aircraft to the firefighting departments of regional and national governments across the world, including the British Columbia Wildfire Service.
Conair sources "gently" used and/or new aircraft -- often former passenger planes -- and embarks on long, complex and not inexpensive conversion processes that typically include stripping away any needless parts and creature comforts (like passenger seats), bolstering the stuff that needs to be bolstered, and affixing large external tanks to hold fire retardant or water.
More on this highly sophisticated process, for those who want to read about it, in a sidebar at the end of this story. But for everyone else, suffice to say that this is precisely how new firefighting aircraft are born.
In and around Penticton and the South Okanagan, most people will know Conair for the "Convair CV580" air tankers, passenger aircraft manufactured in the 1950s and converted by Conair in the 1990s that for a couple decades formed the nucleus of the aerial firefighting setup based at Penticton Airport.
The familiar growl of the Convairs as they inched their way into the sky from the YYF tarmac, rumbling over the city on a flight path that would often take them directly over the Penticton Channel, was intrusive to some but music to most. The sound meant a nearby blaze was being attacked.
But the Convairs couldn’t last forever. And in the late summer of 2022, Conair put the entire fleet out to pasture -- including the three stationed here in Penticton.
One made it to the BC Aviation Museum in Victoria, flown there by a great guy named Grahame "Whiskey" Wilson, the longest serving Convair pilot in the region. Wilson retired at the same time the Convairs did, and he pushed to take one of them to the facility, near his home.
His got his wish. Indeed, Wilson himself is now happily ensconced as a tour guide and docent at the museum, alongside his beloved Convair -- the one with the big "55" on its tail.
"The CV580 is now a popular part of the museum’s growing aerial firefighting collection," Wilson told NowMedia this week. "I even show guests in-flight movies of Okanagan firebombing inside the plane."
Near the CV580 is a Douglas A-26 Invader, a one-time combat aircraft that too found a second life, many decades ago, in firefighting. And Wilson is hopeful the facility will also one day house a Martin Mars -- an enormous and somewhat iconic World War II-era flying boat that was converted for firefighting duty 60-ish years ago.
But back to the Convairs, which are now done throughout the province. And here in Penticton, the longtime home of three, the replacements have arrived.
But wait. There's only two of them. A three-for-two swap? That hardly seems fair. Are we being shortchanged?
No, says Conair, emphasizing that the incoming models are newer, bigger, faster and just plain better. So two are all that's needed to replace the three old-school tankers.
But what are they? Well, you know those De Havilland Dash 8s that WestJet and Air Canada fly in and out of Penticton all the time? Those are precisely the planes we're talking about. Conair took a bunch of Dash 8s, converted them, and put them into active firefighting duty.
Indeed, four of them got an unexpectedly early call to the frontlines, toiling in Alberta in the month of May during that province's brutal spring wildfire season.
But before we go any further, let's first clarify the name. The Dash 8, when it was initially manufactured by De Havilland Canada in the 1980s, was officially known as the "Dash 8-Q400." In time, De Havilland dropped the "Q," calling it simply the "Dash 8-400."
When Conair converted and repurposed the aircraft, they added an "AT" (for "Air Tanker") suffix. Thusly, in its tanker guise it's known as the "Dash 8-400AT."
Got all that? Good. Because there's one more wrinkle. Seems the "Q" designation, unofficially anyway, never really went away. It lives on as the aircraft's industry nickname. So when you talk to a pilot, he or she will likely refer to the plane simply as the "Q."
We prefer "Dash."
So…what makes it such a big deal when it comes to firefighting? For starters, says Conair, it's the "newest airtanker available in the world today."
"It fills a growing niche in the aerial firefighting industry," said the media release. "It offers large airtanker payload capacity, capable of dropping up to 10,000 litres of retardant, foam or water, while still being able to operate out of smaller airtanker bases with 5,000-foot runways at higher elevations, positioned closer to where wildfires occur."
Compared with the outgoing Convair, the key data looks solid.
In a tank versus tank battle (retardant tank that is), the oldster comes up 25 percent short at 7,950 litres compared to 10,000 litres. As for "loaded cruise speed" (the top continuous speed a fully loaded tanker can travel), we're looking at 270 knots (Convair) versus 360 in the Dash.
Then there's a stat Conair tells us is particularly important. It's something called the "fuel burn versus retardant delivered" number. And according to Conair's tests, the Dash delivers 15.9 litres of retardant per litre of fuel burned while the departing plane did just 9.7 litres with that same litre.
That means, says Conair, that the Dash is substantially more fuel efficient than the Convair, which translates into operational cost savings. Plus, since the tanker spends less time on the tarmac for fuel stops, it can spend more time in the air working missions.
They also say it spews less carbon dioxide into the environment.
NowMedia dropped by the YYF air tanker base earlier this month to grab a few pics and chat with the people who work with the tankers every day of the season. Numbers are one thing, but personal experience is another.
At the time, the Dash duo had been on site just over a week. And they'd already seen duty in several literal hotspots, including the high-profile Pigeon Creek blaze just west of Peachland.
And while we found noticeable fondness in our interviewees for the outgoing Convairs -- who can blame them after all those years? -- there was a ton of confidence in the rookie performers too.
We met pilot Capt. Richard Tolson in the cockpit of one of the new planes. Tolson's been an aerial firefighter for 25 years. He has untold experience not only with the Convair, but with Conair's Douglas DC-6 conversion and the Conair Firecat (a military surplus plane mod) even before that.
He describes himself as "an old school pilot" with "a lot of round dials and steam-driven airplanes" in his past.
Given that, we figured he might be partial to the Convair. So we asked him.
"Quite frankly," he said with a smile, "I'm a traditional old school slide rule-built airplane guy.
"So I'm definitely not a 'Child of the Magenta' (a derogatory term for pilots who depend on automation) as far as avionics and automation are concerned.
"But I have learned to understand it and appreciate it. And it’s magic. It really is. The Q is a fully capable airplane."
Tolson knows of what he speaks. He was one of the pilots to fly ten back-to-back round trips to the Pigeon Creek blaze.
He's also a fan of the Dash's air conditioning.
The Convair, you see, didn’t have that luxury. Or rather, it did when it was manufactured some 60-odd years ago, but lost it during the conversion process to save weight and increase efficiency. And that disappearance made the Convair cockpit a crazy stifling place to be, especially when sitting over a raging wildfire in the midst of summer.
Not so with the substantially comfier Dash, with which Tolson is becoming increasingly fond.
"Yep, we've been able to keep all that original equipment in this plane because it's perfectly capable of carrying it out," he said.
But it's what he's been able to do so far with the Dash that's most impressed him.
"The thing about the Convair is that we found there were limitations when the temps got warmer and density altitudes increased," he said. "It affected performance in the airplane.
"But we've found with the Q that it has more power when you need it most. Like in the fire environment, if you're called off a drop you can carry that load away very easily. That was a bit of a handful in the Convair in higher temperatures.
"The other area we find it very beneficial is that we don’t have the same restrictions as we did in carrying loads out of shorter (air)strips, like in Castlegar or Springbank, Alberta (just west of Calgary). We now have that performance."
But you needn't be a pilot to witness some of that performance advantage. Anyone who's ever watched a Convair in its first couple minutes of flight (most of the population of Penticton included) need merely watch the Dash do the same thing. It gains significantly more altitude significantly more quickly than its predecessor.
By the time it passes the other edge of the city, it's a comparative speck in the sky versus the Convair.
Moreover, Tolson believes the Q/pilot relationship will only improve going forward.
"We're learning now especially with the FEAS (Flight Envelope Advisory System) that we have an angle of attack indicator and a load indicating system in here, so we can utilize the angle of attack to our benefit to control an airplane for downhill pushes. Like pushing down the side of a mountain to lay retardant down a flank of a fire for example.
"But we're in the baby stages in the program with the Q and we're learning a lot more about that now to be able to meet or exceed those expectations."
Speaking of airlines, Tolson's never flown for one. Thusly, he's never shuttled people around in a Dash, or anything else for that matter. Instead, he's spent the last quarter century battling fires in a variety of aircraft and keeping on top of this game with Conair's extensive training program.
"There are two types of pilots," he said. "We have veteran Q pilots who've been with the airlines and know the system. Me, I'm not an airline guy at all. This is my passion. I'm highly experienced in the fire environment. So it works out well."
Moreover, he added, whenever a Dash-400AT flies a mission there's a pilot and a co-pilot at the controls. Like they say, two heads are batter than one. And two sets of hands too.
"The mission over the target is always flown by the left seat as far as triggering the load over the fire," explained Tolson. "But it's really a ballet between the co-pilot, who's operating power and flap, and the pilot, and there's always communication between the two to keep it safe.
"You put a lot of trust into each other. A lot of training goes into our crew."
One of the people Tolson works with before and during missions is Greg Adams. No, not the ex-Vancouver Canuck hockey-playing Greg Adams, the Air Attack Officer (AAO) Greg Adams.
Adams sits in the "bird dog" aircraft (in Penticton, that's a Turbo Commander 690B) during missions, alongside the pilot.
The bird dog in effect coaches each operation, instructing the tankers where to drop their loads in the fire zone and often doing so by flying the desired path themselves and ejecting smoke trails at the right spot(s). And in the cockpit, the AAO works with the pilot to determine the specific mission plan and then feeds those instructions to each of the tankers.
Adams, a super friendly guy who lives in Revelstoke, plied his AAO skills elsewhere last year, and this year is working out of Penticton with the new Dash 8-400ATs, also likes what he sees in the Dash.
"They've been here just a little over a week," Adams said at the time, "and we've had I think eight or nine missions already, including one to Harrison Lake. We worked three fires over there a couple days in a row.
"Both planes did 10 loads each to the Peachland fire, so 20 loads in total. Between drops for each plane was about 35 to 40 minutes. That includes time to land, taxi to the loading bib, get loaded with retardant, taxi back out, take off, get organized and arrive at the fire.
"Then when we're at the fire, it takes us anywhere from two to four minutes to get the direction they need to deliver their load. So we were pretty happy. It's a much more modern aircraft. It has really good power for its weight."
We asked Adams if the public should be concerned that just two Dashes replaced three Convairs.
"It is a bit of step-down in terms of volume," he said, "but it's offset by the speed and capability of the new aircraft. Though if things get really active, we'd do what we can to bring in more aircraft."
But Adams's responsibilities don’t start and finish in the bird dog cockpit. As an Air Attack Officer, he's also the guy who stands on guard between missions.
He does that with a laptop loaded up with Google Earth and far more critically, a PC running a slick bit of software called "Dispatch."
In the latter, a map of BC is layered with patches of colour-coded numbers and letters. Adams explained the sophistication behind it.
"So on the map," he said, "we have an icon for each fire in the province that tells us if it’s being held or under control or out of control. We can also turn on different details. Me, being an air attack officer, I have all the air tanker assets up as well as the air tanker requests.
"I also have initial phone reports. So if someone calls into the 1-800 centre (1-800-663-5555 or *5555 from a cell phone) to report a fire, I'll see it pop up here. And I'll give it a read to see what they're describing.
"Often those reports turn out to be nothing. Or crews could be dispatched right away, depending on the report. There could be several reports at the same time, and that's a better indicator it's a legitimate wildfire. And the folks at the fire centre decide what resources are needed."
According to Adams, the map's orange flags represent fires -- with a nearby black-on-red "OC" if that fire is out of control -- while the three-digit flags identify firefighting aircraft.
"The aircraft have live tracking too," he said, "so as they're flying I can watch they're doing. And I can bring up their history trails.
"Then I have air tanker requests up as well. So when it's determined a fire needs air tanker resources, they'll submit a request that goes to our central dispatch system in Kamloops. It's essentially an instant messaging system between the provincial air tanker centre and the fire centre that’s requesting. And the coordination officer in Kamloops for the air tanker program will dispatch out resources as needed."
On this particular day, with the Pigeon Creek fire on the wane (thanks in no small part to all that work by the Penticton-based tankers) and no other nearby threat, Adams scrutinized the "Dispatch" map and almost instantly determined the nearest current action was in the Revelstoke area.
And in just a few moments, he knew much more than that.
"The closet air tanker request to Penticton," he said, "is near Mica Dam. We have a birddog who's at the fire right now, and it looks like one tanker is departing from the fire. So it looks like they've been attacking it already."
"I could also open up the request and see what the bird dog has been saying. In the airplane we have a satellite phone, and we use that to call central dispatch and give them information and request additional resources if needed. And then that gets entered into this instant messaging system that's available for all users to read."
Then Adams gave us a blow by blow glimpse into the inner workings of the multi-round trip Pigeon Creek firefighting effort a few days prior. And we listened intently because we love this stuff.
"When we first got the call," he said, "it was about one hectare in size. By the end of the day, it was 33.
"But we hit it hard with retardant. We had tankers there as well as skimmers (purpose-built amphibious firefighting aircraft that are often battling blazes near Penticton but aren't stationed here). And we had one helicopter as well and ground resources -- about 44 people -- there pretty quickly.
"So we were trying to hold the top while the ground crews worked it from the bottom. To me it was clear that if we left, the fire was going to get away. So we kept on surrounding it with retardant all day long."
Now, as summer comes on and temps start to rise once more (highs of 35 are expected a week from now), the Penticton Air Tanker Base, its new weapons and its crew will undoubtedly be tested to the max.
From our perspective, it looks like all are up to the challenge.
Sidebar: The Dash 8 conversion process
There's a heck of a lot more to converting a Dash 8-400 passenger aircraft to a Dash 8-400AT firefighting beast. And Conair sent a primer for those who want to read up on the process. We preset it here untouched.
“The first step in the conversion process is an interior de-mod, or stripping down the cabin to the bare frame in order to reduce the aircraft’s weight,” says Dustin Littler, Aircraft Conversion Manager at Conair. “The cockpit is then opened up to allow for access to install specialized avionics.”
The flight deck is equipped with a Conair-developed and Transport Canada-certified Flight Envelope Awareness System, which provides pilots with enhanced safety awareness information such as instantaneous G-Loading, slow speed awareness, and angle of attack information. Conair’s priority is the safety of their crew, proactively adopting innovative technologies that go beyond minimum standards.
The airtanker is then outfitted with an external tank, enabling the interior of the fuselage to remain pressurized and climate controlled, creating a safer environment for pilots by reducing fatigue.
“It takes a solid eight weeks to install the tank, fairings and perform avionics modifications, plus another two weeks to reassemble the cockpit, and perform operational tests, ground runs and test flights,” said Littler.
The tank is manufactured, tested and calibrated prior to the install on the aircraft, and the Dash 8-400AT is painted in Conair’s signature white, red and black colours to complete the process.
