Forgive me if a gathering of the perverted amongst aviators has already occurred in this forum, I'm rather fresh here.

Who else manages a spinning a collection of parts for a living, and where do you work?

I'm in Northern British Columbia, Canada, great place to be as there's always something in the air, bugs, snow, rain, or smoke. You can also pick any two of those at once!

http://youtu.be/qm21Efpxe78

That's fire footage of 100m / 300' flames this season filmed by a passenger in my machine. We were mapping the fire for a customer with a lot of assets in the area.

Damn, that looks like a volcano.

It's the most intense fire activity I've seen, trees were gassing off from the heat and exploding. Poplars literally "popped" as the water inside boiled, blowing themselves open.

I fly little machines these days on a remote site contract deep in the northern bush, fairly repetitive single customer gig, but family friendly camp job as I can crew in and out on shifts. So a little fun like this is well enjoyed, I don't chase and fight fires like most in the industry through summer.

Angus, that is some amazing footage. That fire would have been an absolute blowtorch in a 30-knot wind.

It was rather extraordinary, a perfect storm with the notable exception of the wind. There was however an extremely strong convection flow around the base, it was pulling in huge amounts of air. The top went right into the FLs and the condensation nuclei formed a TCU, and later lighting. Pretty impressive.

This was also less than 1% of the fire, just one hot spot of an enormous burn.

Angus,, looks like you are in a 412

No that's the humble little R44 there Trax, oddly enough the pint sized workhorse of the Canadian north. I may be forced to go fly astar (squirrel) next season as my comfy contract here may be ending due to current energy prices. Never flown the 412, just 205 / Huey. I hear the 412s are smooth, but I'd leave the second engine behind if I could.

Hi Angus
You are right a really hot fire,in all my years on the fires on helicopters and the 5000+ bomb runs on the PBY I seldom saw anything as hot as that.Had a look at Fred's lakes on the way south.I hope your outfitting is going well.
Take care Bill

It was pretty well a "perfect storm", everything was called off no sense fighting that, and the air currents were absurd. Stopped about seven miles north of Fred's plane when it was stuck on that lake. We were starting to make plans to tow his 206 out to the middle and anchor it when a ton of rain came, as we were considering evacuating camp.

I think that'll be the name of the little round lake, Fred's lake. Good pike in there if you're ever after a pit stop on the way south!