A while back, I was visiting a friend who had spent some time in the military and was familiar with some of the helicopters then in use by the military, including the CH-47 Chinook helicopter. At some point the subject of my blog came up, he briefly mentioned the afore mentioned chinook helicopter, and suggested that I check out Columbia Helicopters.
I did so, and found that Columbia Helicopters uses the civilian version of the CH-43 Chinook, the Boeing 234 Chinook, for fire fighting operations. That was when I decided to spend a little time writing about the Boeing 234 Chinook and other type 1 or heavy firefighting helicopters. According to the Interagency Helicopter Operations Guide (chapter 6), a type 1 or heavy helicopters is defined as:
having at least 15 passenger seats or 5,000 lbs payload, 700 gallon retardant/water capacity, and maximum gross takeoff/landing weight of at least 12,501 lbs.In the video you will see two of Columbia's heavy lift helicopters in action, the Boeing 234 Chinook and the Boeing 107 Vertol. I will be writing about the Boeing 107 Vertol in a later post. As you can see from the above video, both are tandem rotor helicopters.
The wikipedia entry on the CH-47 Chinook may be found here. More information, including some photos of the Boeing 234 Chinook may be found here.
Columbia has three variants of the Boeing 234 Chinook, the utility, combi, and the LR:
234 utility specifications
234 combi specifications
234 LR specifications
If you go the main page of the Columbia Helicopters web page (sorry that I can provide a direct link, and click on the operations menu and then on flight operations you will find their "fighting wildfires" page. You will see that the Boeing 234 Chinook carries a 3,000 gallon bucket, has a foam tank and is capable of carrying what Columbia calls long-term retardant.
I'd like to thank my friend and aviation historian, T, for his assistance in helping me find the links that I have included here and for the links in upcoming posts.
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