YES! Where is the fun in that? Do a low flyover at 80knots, drag that bucket in the water to fill and have a high speed head start towards the fire.... also, this is probably how I would crash and start a whole new fire!
Very nice, one thing id still like to try in a sim... Dropping water is not as simple as you think, where and how high or fast they drop all depends on the need of ether ground crews, bird-dog (Airboss) or just pilots discretion. for eq fast and high gives you a longer line and a mist effect to dampen the air and plants, alot of the time (depending on fire behavior, terrain, ground crews) you not actually trying to put the fire itself out but slow the rate of burn to give teams the time they need to prep lines and put the fire out more effectively. Love the video, lots of memories with that!
Couple of tips for water dropping: 1) Drop speeds should be between 30 to 60 knots, max. Higher speeds cause the water to overshoot the target, and disperse too readily to do much good. 2) Drop height is usually best with the bucket at about 100’ (30M) above the ‘canopy’ (tree tops, brush tops, or the ground if grass and light brush), so about 120 on the RadAlt. Your goal is to have the water stop all forward motion right at the top of the fuel canopy and rain straight down. 3) For high elevation external load work, double check your Crew & Equipment tab to offload everyone but the pilot. Crew will be on the ground. Then, double check the Weight page on the VMS to reduce Crew to ~200lbs/90kl. As I recall, your Cargo weight will be controlled by the ‘Mission’ (bucket) and may, or may not, be user adjustable during Bambi use. That’s ok. And you are correct that the sim does not support real firefighting tactics of ‘Indirect, pretreat, or line building’, so the only option is to drop on the flames. But, you *can* attack the flames most likely to spread in a direction you don’t want, so there is a bit containment strategy that works in that regard. Fun video, btw!!
