ArcticArtique

This is a Fire Boss. An Air Tractor AT802F airplane. Originally an agriculture spray plane (also known as a crop duster), floats and “scooping” ability have been incorporated to this workhorse to make a unique firefighting platform. A 1600 horsepower Pratt-Whitney PT-6 engine powers this single seat beast. This bird has some power! With the floats, it has the ability to skim across remote water sources and scoop up about 800 gallons of water to dump on a forest fire. We have a couple of them stationed here at Galena now. They’ve been coming and going to a fire that sprung up west of our position. My helicopter happens to be there now also. For the last couple of days I’ve been trying to get all of my upcoming maintenance finished so we can go to work without having to shut down for inspections. It was a lot of work and I was whooped, but it was worth it! We have all kinds of airplanes, helicopters, and fire crews filtering through here now. This place has gotten busy! Tomorrow, I plan on having camera in hand for tons of pictures. Hopefully, I can show you just a bit of what happens at a fire base in the remote parts of Alaska. Stay tuned, I’m back on track!