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28 Mar 2024, 09:29 [ UTC - 5; DST ]


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 Post subject: Re: NORTH AMERICAN OV10 BRONCOS
PostPosted: 29 Dec 2021, 00:34 
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From the California Fire Pilots Association website:

"Current CalFIRE aircraft have had all of the armor and weapon systems removed. There is an additional 125 gallon fuel tank in the cargo bay allowing us to stay aloft over a fire for over 5 hours. CalFIRE OV10's have also been totally rewired to accommodate up to the date avionics and navigation systems, as well as all of the radios required for airtactical control of the fire.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF or CALFIRE) has acquired a number of OV-10As, including the six surviving aircraft from the BLM and 13 U.S. Navy in 1993 to replace their existing Cessna O-2 Skymasters as air attack aircraft. The CAL FIRE Broncos fly with a crew of two, a pilot and the Air Attack Officer, whose job it is to coordinate all aerial assets on a fire with the Incident Commander on the ground. Thus, besides serving as a tanker lead-in aircraft, the OV-10A is also the aerial platform from which the entire air operation is coordinated."


One is based here at Ukiah and we see it fly often. When it takes off (we can see and hear from our house up the canyon), we know there is a fire somewhere and I can check the website to see where it is. The two S-2T air tankers soon follow.

Dan


I hear bad things about the -14s. Can you shed anylighy


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 Post subject: Re: NORTH AMERICAN OV10 BRONCOS
PostPosted: 04 Jan 2022, 10:22 
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They are an interesting airplane to fly. I logged 100 ish hours during the 2020 fire season. Visibility is crazy good. Little less so from the back seat but I never sat back there lol. Now I’m in the S2 tanker … oh man, that’s the most fun airplane I’ve ever flown. The stuff we can make that airplane do is amazing. It’ll come downhill like a brick if you fly it slow enough


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 Post subject: Re: NORTH AMERICAN OV10 BRONCOS
PostPosted: 04 Jan 2022, 10:51 
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Joined: 01/21/14
Posts: 5094
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Company: FAA Flight Check
Location: Oklahoma City, OK (KOKC)
Aircraft: King Air 300F/C90GTx
Quote:
"The CAL FIRE Broncos fly with a crew of two, a pilot and the Air Attack Officer, whose job it is to coordinate all aerial assets on a fire with the Incident Commander on the ground. Thus, besides serving as a tanker lead-in aircraft, the OV-10A is also the aerial platform from which the entire air operation is coordinated."

Man OH Man - that mission statement sounds tailored made to me! :thumbup:

@ Tristan - You are CalFire I am presuming.
When you mention the S-2 tanker - and it say it is the most fun - are we talking about the mission (tanker -vs- air attack) or the S-2 is actually a more fun aircraft?
It is just hard to imagine much more in the fire fighting fleet that would actually be more FUN to fly than the OV-10 giving its' capabilities and performance.

I know little of the OV-10. They quit selecting for the platform just before I graduated pilot training, but I did serve in my first squadron with a transition OV-10 pilot who had some interesting stories though I do NOT believe he served in the community during Desert Storm.


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 Post subject: Re: NORTH AMERICAN OV10 BRONCOS
PostPosted: 04 Jan 2022, 23:47 
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What Tristan is not telling you is about 95% of the OV10 flying is making right hand circles at a steady altitude between3/5000ft agl. for hours on end. After about 3 to 4 hours another air attack comes up to relive you and you go back to base refuel and if you can grab a quick nap grab some lunch and then go out and relive the other air attack.

Like the Dixey fire that went on for days on end. Your main job is to take the ATGS were He/She wants to go. Only a couple of Pilots are approved to go down in the dirt as a lead aircraft. And when there are no fires, you sit at base you are CalFires property from 11AM until 30min before dusk.


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 Post subject: Re: NORTH AMERICAN OV10 BRONCOS
PostPosted: 05 Jan 2022, 08:26 
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Aircraft: King Air 300F/C90GTx
Username Protected wrote:
What Tristan is not telling you is about 95% of the OV10 flying is making right hand circles at a steady altitude between3/5000ft agl. for hours on end. After about 3 to 4 hours another air attack comes up to relive you and you go back to base refuel and if you can grab a quick nap grab some lunch and then go out and relive the other air attack.

Like the Dixey fire that went on for days on end. Your main job is to take the ATGS were He/She wants to go. Only a couple of Pilots are approved to go down in the dirt as a lead aircraft. And when there are no fires, you sit at base you are CalFires property from 11AM until 30min before dusk.

Sounds somewhat like FAC(A)'ing :cheers:


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 Post subject: Re: NORTH AMERICAN OV10 BRONCOS
PostPosted: 06 Jan 2022, 01:05 
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Kim is spot on, the mission can be interesting but only because you are watching the fire from beginning to end (on a short fire). The actual flying is boring.

I might be out of line because of the fan club that surrounds the bronco but … the airplane is a dog to fly, it’s under powered and single engine is just as bad as most trainer aircraft. And we fly it fairly light weight, 10,500 gross if I recall correctly. It’s slow too, I can pass a bronco in the tanker if I try. The S2 on the other hand is a hot rod. Even loaded it does really well. Has spoilers so turning harmony is great, plus trying to come downhill is super easy. Oh and the low level environment is where it’s it, best flying job ever and the pay is crazy. All for a VFR twin turboprop day time flying job.

I’ve heard the 10 model bronco has better performance but honestly, the bronco needs another 4’ of wing.


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 Post subject: Re: NORTH AMERICAN OV10 BRONCOS
PostPosted: 06 Jan 2022, 10:05 
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A few more pictures I found


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 Post subject: Re: NORTH AMERICAN OV10 BRONCOS
PostPosted: 06 Jan 2022, 22:39 
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Company: FAA Flight Check
Location: Oklahoma City, OK (KOKC)
Aircraft: King Air 300F/C90GTx
So…. I fly into Ft Smith, AR today and see a OV-10 on the ramp with Mk-76s hanging on a pylon!
Then as I pull into parking there is a second one in a hangar next to the FBO.
I take pictures of both to share with BT, but when I ask the guy about them he tells me that they are operated by BLUEAIR.
So instead of sharing my poor quality pictures, here is their website:

https://blueairtraining.com/

So these guys are just like the job I had with ATAC before my current job but maybe even a better fit because they seem to concentrate on CAS/JTAC training.


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 Post subject: Re: NORTH AMERICAN OV10 BRONCOS
PostPosted: 06 Jan 2022, 23:11 
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Joined: 01/24/10
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Location: Concord , CA (KCCR)
Aircraft: 1967 Baron B55
I wonder where their money comes from? Possible off the books government group?


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 Post subject: Re: NORTH AMERICAN OV10 BRONCOS
PostPosted: 07 Jan 2022, 00:26 
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Joined: 01/19/16
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Location: 13FA Earle Airpark FL/0A7 Hville NC
Aircraft: E33/152A
They are D models owned by Mike Manclark. https://www.ov10squadron.com/ and are leased to fulfill a government contract. They were restored in Chino.


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 Post subject: Re: NORTH AMERICAN OV10 BRONCOS
PostPosted: 07 Jan 2022, 01:20 
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Joined: 08/17/15
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Aircraft: Ex-King Air 350i
This book is what made me enamored with the Bronco.


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 Post subject: Re: NORTH AMERICAN OV10 BRONCOS
PostPosted: 07 Jan 2022, 18:06 
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Joined: 06/30/11
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Username Protected wrote:
I flew 177 combat missions over Laos and Cambodia in the Bronco, and loved it from the first time I saw it. It was a very stable weapons platform and a great aerobatic machine. Looking at that video of the washboard runway brought back a memory from training: We were told that the airplane suffered no damage from those tests, but that one of the pilots wound up with a tear of his diaphragm that required surgery. For most of my tour out of Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai AFB I flew over the Ho Chi Minh trail in the daytime with nobody in the back seat (occasionally we had an intel officer back there for familiarization with the Trail and to qualify for combat pay since they were stationed in Thailand, or also occasionally, an Air Force or Navy fighter/attack pilot that wanted to get a closer/lower/slower view of the Trail), and the configuration was the four 30 cal machine guns with 2000 rounds, 4 rocket pods with 28 white phosphorus rockets, and a centerline 600 gal external fuel tank which gave us over 5 hours endurance. For about 6 weeks I flew out of Ubon RTAFB doing the combat evaluation of the Pave Nail Version of the Bronco. (Eval targets were in Cambodia) This one had the stick removed from the back seat to allow for a scope that was attached to a belly pod that replaced the 600 gal external tank. The pod could be rotated 360 deg horizontally and 180 deg vertically. It contained a starlight scope and boresighted laser. In addition a loran receiver and computer were added. Also there were 2 250gal aux tanks, one on a hardpoint of each wing. A navigator rode in the back and operated that gear. When we had a target, the back seater would lase it and the computer would calculate the target's position based on the aircraft position, the laser range, the plane's attitude, and the attitude of the pod. We would then call Hillsboro (daytime C130 ABCCC) or at night Moon Beam and they would launch an alert pad F4 from Ubon armed with a couple of paveway laser guided bombs. When the F4 checked in we would give him the loran time coordinates for the target to put into his computer and told him what attack heading to use. He would come in at 14000 feet, call us 1 minute from bomb release so we had time to get out of the way of the bomb path. When he called bomb away the back seater would start counting down from 32 seconds (bomb fall time), and when he got down to 15 seconds he would start lasing the target. Of the 41 bombs Tom Wilson, my back seater, and I guided during the eval, 40 were bullseyes (the one that missed was about 100 meters long and we assumed that it must have had a stuck guidance fin in the back). After the eval we took all 5 or 6 Pave Nail birds up to NKP and started flying them at night over the Trail. It was a great system, the bomb release happened about 5 miles from the target so they never heard the F4. My experience was that the F4s had to drop an average of 20 to 30 dumb bombs to destroy a single truck in a heavily defended area (the Air Force F100s and the Navy A4s and A7s did much better than that). The paveways more that paid for their cost difference in just the munitions cost not to mention the additional sorties. Plus the F4s were not subjected to the triple A fire.


Vincente,
Please check your log book for this aircraft. Also would be very interested if you have any pics.
Regards,
Norman

OV-10A, s/n 67-14621
Manufactured by North American Aviation, Columbus OH and gained by the USAF on
12 Jun 1968.
Jul 1968 To 3rd Tactical Fighter Wing (Pacific Air Forces), Bien Hoa AB Vietnam
(via Hurlburt Field FL)
Aug 1968 To 504th Tactical Air Support Group (PACAF), Bien Hoa AB Vietnam
Jul 1971 To 504th Tactical Air Support Group (PACAF), Phan Rang AB Vietnam
Dec 1971 To 504th Tactical Air Support Group (PACAF), Da Nang AB Vietnam
Mar 1972 To 366th Tactical Fighter Wing (PACAF), Da Nang AB
Jun 1972 To 6498th Air Base Wing (PACAF), Da Nang AB
Nov 1972 To 56th Special Operations Wing (PACAF), Nakhon Phanom RTAFB
Thailand (deployment to U Tapao RTAFB Thailand)
Sep 1975 To 56th Special Operations Wing (PACAF), U Tapao RTAFB
Oct 1975 To NAS Cherry Point NC
Sep 1976 To 507th Tactical Air Control Wing (Tactical Air Command), Shaw AFB
SC
Jul 1978 To 601st Tactical Air Control Wing (US Air Forces Europe), Wiesbaden
AB Germany
Jun 1984 To 602nd Tactical Air Control Wing (TAC), George AFB CA
Aug 1986 To 343rd Tactical Fighter Wing (Alaskan Air Command), Eielson AFB
AK (deployment to Davis-Monthan AFB AZ)
Sep 1989 To 602nd Tactical Air Control Wing (TAC), George AFB
Jun 1990 To 602nd Tactical Air Control Wing (TAC), Davis-Monthan AFB

Records don’t show the transfer to the Venezuela Air Force in 1990. It was on the ground there with the engines removed in the 1992 Hugo Chavez coup attempt before I acquired it.


Video of one of at least 3 F-16 Bronco shoot downs during the coup attempt

https://youtu.be/nDASW6X0XoU

I purchased 3 that made it back to the airport with battle damage. One had it’s aileron blown off by his buddy that didn’t want to kill him. Another landed gear up on his centerline drop tank and reportedly ejected 0/0 on the runway when it caught fire. The other was riddled with bullet holes. The fourth one was 14621 and was on the ground with engines removed during the coup.

They were recent trainees and were firing on a row of parked F-5s thinking that they were F-16s. Little did they know the F-16s had already scrambled and were jumping the low time Bronco pilots from a nearby base.


Hi Norman, I finally got home and checked through my logbooks. During initial training at Hurlburt field FL the nearest tail I flew was 618. At NKP I did fly 620 a number of times, and at Ubon the closest we had was 623. Tail number621 was definitely a Covey FAC bird out of Danang

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 Post subject: Re: NORTH AMERICAN OV10 BRONCOS
PostPosted: 16 Jan 2022, 09:54 
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Joined: 01/19/16
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Location: 13FA Earle Airpark FL/0A7 Hville NC
Aircraft: E33/152A
Great footage of the DOS air wing coca plant eradication effort in South America that ended in 2008.

They lost a couple from ground fire and got hit frequently. I sold them quite a few parts due to small arms fire.

Looks like they were having a lot of fun.

https://youtu.be/4Wx00Aq9Vsk


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 Post subject: Re: NORTH AMERICAN OV10 BRONCOS
PostPosted: 20 Jan 2022, 01:08 
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Joined: 01/19/16
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Location: 13FA Earle Airpark FL/0A7 Hville NC
Aircraft: E33/152A
Short clip of Hoover doing his magic in a Bronco

https://youtu.be/x8lvyiNbHtU


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 Post subject: Re: NORTH AMERICAN OV10 BRONCOS
PostPosted: 21 Jan 2022, 17:06 
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If it had N.A.A. on the rudder pedals Hoover could put on a air show with it! Given the chance he might have pulled one off with the space shuttle. :thumbup: :btt:


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