Coulson-Unical CU-47 and UH-60 Helicopters

Last March I noted when Bill Gabbert of Fire Aviation wrote about a partnership between Coulson and Unical Air, called Coulson-Unical. This partnership will add several UH-60 and CH-47 helicopters to Coulson's fleet of firefighting helicopters. Bill wrote about Coulson-Unical in a March 2019 post on Fire Aviation where he had this to say about the plans for the plans for the UH-60 and the CH-47 helicopters:

The capabilities of the helicopters will include night-vision, IFR navigation, and hover filling. At least some of the newly acquired CH-47s and UH-60s will be outfitted with RADS internal tanks. The basic design of the RADS was created by Aero Union decades ago and features steep slopes on the sides when space allows, to facilitate enough head pressure at the bottom to ensure quick and constant flow. The technology used will enable automated target drops for the night vision goggle firefighting program and will have the capability to adjust flow rates based on speed and altitude. A Coulson helicopter that has been certified in Australia for night drops has been used on a regular basis for the last several months during the country’s 2018-2019 bushfire season.

Bill interviewed Coulson Vice President Britt Coulson about the Coulson-Unical partnership in March 2019. You might want to take the three plus minutes to watch the video and learn about these helicopters.

Direct link to Youtube video by Bill Gabbert of Wildfire Today

By August 2019, Coulson-Unical had converted a UH-60 Blackhawk and it was spotted at McClellan in California, see Bill's August 2019 Fire Aviation post for more details. 

Coulson has a nice Facebook page (go here) where they share photos and videos of their aircraft. On May 8th, Coulson posted some photos and a video (the first comment) of their converted CH-47, now known as a CU-47. Then on May 25th, they posted four photos of their new UH-60 Blackhawks. 

I was especially interested in Bill's reporting on the Coulson-Unical partnership and the purchase and planned conversion of CH-47 helicopters because I learned about the capabilities of the CH-47 from a friend of mine. I have actually seen a military CH-47 in the air while one of my pilot friends was taking me flying. Even from a distance of about five plus miles, I was impressed by its size. 

So, when I heard from Mike Archer's Wildfire News of the Day about the Vertical Magazine article about the new CU-47, a recently converted CH-47 by Coulson-Unical I was very interested and saw the May 26th Vertical Magazine article, "Coulson's CU-47 Ready for fire fight" This same article is in the May 22nd issue of Skies Magazine. The author of the article, Howard Slutsken, writes about this conversion, here is an excerpt:

In early March, the first Coulson-Unical CU-47 was flown from the company’s Port Alberni, B.C., base to the Aerial Firefighting North American 2020 conference in Sacramento, Calif.

Featuring a 3,000 gallon roll-on/roll-off internal tank and an advanced Garmin avionics suite, up to 12 CH-47Ds will be converted into next-generation heli-tankers, in a partnership with Unical Aviation that was announced a year ago.

“Unical provides us with the aircraft and a vast supply of parts,” explained Britt Coulson, president and COO, in an interview with Skies.

“They bought the entire Canadian Forces CH-47 parts inventory and were the largest purchaser of CH-47Ds from the U.S. Army.”

The twin-rotor Chinook is well known for its speed, size and payload. While the helicopter is often deployed on fire attack missions carrying a water bucket as an external load, Coulson wanted to give the CU-47 more flexibility and capability.

Slutsken's article on Vertical Magazine/Skies Magazine is freely available as I write this. I don't always know how long such articles will be freely available.