CL-415 (turbo) scooper

I've got a couple of projects in the pipeline for future blog articles. In the meantime, I found this nice video on the Canadian built Bombardier  CL-415 scooper. The CL-415 is purpose built fire bomber. It is an amphibious aircraft that "scoops" water out of a water body for eventual dropping on a fire. Originally built by Canadair , the CL-415 evolved from the CL-215 (also an amphibious aircraft. The original CL-215 had piston engines. Canadair started out by modifying some CL-215 airframes by, among other things, adding turbo props and calling them CL-215T's, Eventually, they built new airframes with turbo prop engines with the designation, CL-415. For more on the CL-415 see:

wikipedia on CL 415
Bombardier super scooper page

Two or three CL-215's had been flying fires in the U.S. during the later portion of the summer and possibly into September. I'm not quite sure if they are still in the U.S. at the moment. According to altadena (CA) online, the CL-415s will be in LA County through Nov. 31, 2011.

According to a Sept. 6, 2011 post on smokeshowin (article no longer available online), the Quebec Government-owned CL-415s (Tankers #240 and #241) are based out of Van Nuys airport and had already worked two fires. This is the eighteenth year that LA County has contracted with Quebec for two CL-415s.

Thank-you Canada!

update on Oct. 7, 2011 9:39 AM EDT: A good friend told me that the video that I embedded yesterday may have been of a model. Further, some of the maneuvers that were done are not maneuvers that occur on normal fire bombing runs. While the vide is fun to watch and nicely done, I wanted to show a CL 415 fire bomber. So, I went to you tube and found the video that I embedded here, honoring the men and women of the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources aviation and forest fire management program.