We are in the midst of terrible fires here in Australia right now.
We have a couple of hundred US and Canadian fellas (and gals?) over here helping us out and their efforts are greatly appreciated.

I know we have a number of members here who fly during fire season (MauleMechanic, Andy Young from memory, others) and I wonder if any are over here flying right now.

Some of you might have heard of the sad accident yesterday when a Coulson C130 tanker crashed with a load of fire retardant killing the 3 US crew. Condolences to all families. I hope it was no-one on MaulePilots.

As far as I know only MauleMechanic and I on the Maule Forum fly forest fires. He's full time. I'm mostly retired. My condolences also go to the families of the Coulson C-130 crew. Suppression aircraft are involved in the most risky part of aerial firefighting. They are heavy, low and slow - about 60 feet above the trees and 90 - 120 kts (for airplanes) in order to drop retardant effectively. Any kind of mechanical problem leaves them with few options. They are often flying through smoke so visibility can be very bad and obstacles hard to see. Large fires create massive amounts of heat, wind and turbulence. Large fires usually involve more than one aircraft. We sometimes have helicopters and air tankers at the same altitude dropping water or gel-enhanced water. Avoiding one another in smoke can be a challenge.

Andy, I don't think the sky above the fire-ground was crowded. The area fairly remote. Was apparently carrying 15,000kg retardant which it had just dropped. Hot and hilly.

There has been some interesting TV interviews with crew of an Airbus tanker explaining the damage to aircraft from the heat due to fire proximity, airborne rubbish etc.

Yep, it’s “Andyâ€￾ that does that kind of flying,, not me (“Andy Youngâ€￾).
My work gig is flying Otters on skis in Alaska. Come to think of it, those are pretty much opposite ends of the spectrum. I can’t recall ever having a wildfire on a glacier.

Hot and hilly conditions make me think of strong ridge top downdrafts and a possible low level stall. The news said that the aircraft made a turn after the drop. Downdrafts from strong winds over ridge tops can push a slow-moving aircraft down into terrain very quickly. Turning to avoid terrain impact could have caused a stall.

We replaced our old Mielec Dromader single engine air tankers with Air Tractor 802Fs a couple of years ago. We couldn't use the Droms for firefighting in the mountains because they didn't have enough power to maneuver around terrain at high density altitude. The 802Fs have 1440 shp turbine engines while the Droms had 500 hp piston radial engines.

Let us know if you hear anything more about the cause.

News this morning Andy, after previously announcing the a/c was not fitted with black box recorders, is that a recorder has been found in the tail in good condition. The tail is essentially the only part of the a/c remaining, long furrows leading across open ground to where it stopped just into some wooded ground.

Here is a link to police drone image - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-25/ ... s/11900654

It does not appear like a straight in impact, maybe an underestimation the rise of the hill. I don't want to speculate any further.