When I wrote about SEATS the other day (see my August 19th post), I did not specifically mention the Amphibious SEATS, namely Air Tractor's AT-802F Fire Boss (Fire Boss) Often, when I refer to SEATS in this blog, I am referring to both 800 gallon SEATs with conventional landing gear including but not limited to Air Tractor's 802F as well as the Fire Boss. Then of course, I should mention that there are SEATs with smaller tanks such as those manufactured by Thrush as well as Air Tractor (and others) that may be used in both agricultural and fire fighting operations.
Today I am specifically interested in the Fire Boss, the subject of this post. I do know that some of the contractors in the United States who have SEATs do have the Fire Boss in their fleet, but I do not know off hand which ones, nor do I know how many of the Call-When-Needed Contracts in the United States go to Fire Boss SEATS. I did want to have a blog post focusing on the Fire Boss, but was waiting to see some good video of them in action, especially scooping.
hanks to my friends at the NJFFS Section B10 Video of the Week (videos updated weekly) who recently shared a wonderful, but somewhat long (10 minutes) video of a group of three Fire Boss SEATs scooping water from Osooyos Lake in British Columbia, Canada while fighting the Richter Mountain Fire near Cawston British Columbia (see about this video in the link below). I did enjoy seeing this group of three Fire Boss SEATs, from Conair in Canada scooping as a group. (see this Conair page for more information on their Fire Boss fleet). I won't repeat the specs and other information here in this post, rather I will leave those of you who are interested in learning more to follow the links in this post. But I do want to mention that the tank capacity is 800 gallons and there is a separate foam tank to inject foam into the water prior to the drop.
Direct link to video by VMC Aviation Videos
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