Aerial Fire Fighting Operations

Hey,

Recently, I have gotten back into flight sims. Downloaded DCS 2.5 and am really impressed with so many aspects of the sim. I understand this is primarily a combat flight sim but....

Would there be any interest in developing modules/terrain for aerial fire fighting operations. I work in the industry as both a lead plane pilot & a tanker captain and we struggle to find proper training tools. Currently, we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year doing training with real bombers & lead planes. The cause of all of this training is mainly to benefit the lead plane pilot & Air attack officers who need to be able to direct aircraft movements over the fire and position them usually via lead in, to apply their product to the fire. While this definitely needs some hands on flying, much of the training is procedural and could easily be done in simulation. We do have a crude addon for FSX that does a very poor job of simulating this and nothing even near what DCS would be capable of imo.

I could see companies like ours willing to pay a LOT of money for a well developed Aerial fire fighting sim.

This may be out of the scope of DCS but thought I'd throw it out there!

Corey

Jeeze, maybe we could get them to build us a Crane simulator while they're at it!! After all, that's pretty much how they got started with the A-10. DOH! I just realized, there's no wind tunnel data for the S-64! :doh:

All kidding aside, I have to agree with you that DCS would make a much better simulator platform that the one they have now! :thumbup:

Eh, personally I'd change aerial firefighting to SAR, I think at the moment aerial firefighting is a little out of scope.

But if ED does extinguishing of fires (would make sense for crash crews at airports, we already have 2 fire engines) I just don't know how you'd go about fighting an 'environmental' fire.

I understand the need. A stand alone training sim for that would be the way to go. A map of California and a few planes/choppers plus the delivery of the extinguishing/retardant medium should do it. Oh and sustained wind driven flames. Watch out for those Santa Ana wind conditions! If your industry has the big bucks, why not contact ED directly...$$$ talks.

If there is a need then definitely have your people contact their people. Aerial firefighting has always fascinated me and is something I would buy into if it were commercially available at the fidelity available with DCS.

I think you spelt 'Aerial Fire BOMBING Operations wrong'... :P

Edit: To clear up any confusion - as fire bombing can also be the water-dropping kind, I meant the explodey-kind of bombing... And I was being sarcastic. Unless they make a Canadair CL-215...

I'd love to see this as well... We already have an H model to use.

The Mi-8 would also be quite effective as a firefighting tool :thumbup:

+1

I'd love to see an aerial fire fighting operations module, I thought about that since the days of the release of IL-2 sturmovik.