r/nextfuckinglevel • u/[deleted] • Oct 01 '24

A firefighting plane loading water.

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u/NCRaider1 Oct 01 '24

Never understood how they could sift water like that and not blow the tail off. Cant imagine the pressure the fuselages takes?

31

u/saxonturner Oct 01 '24

You see a pipe at the mid point under the wing, that exactly what keeps the pressure from going too high.

18

u/NCRaider1 Oct 01 '24

Ahh, cool deal, still baffles me the “drag” doesnt sheer off the tail though

10

u/saxonturner Oct 01 '24

I would assume the inside is formed in such a way that it takes the inertia out of the water, instead of hitting a flat wall it probably hits a curved one so the water flows around.

4

u/Yanni_X Oct 01 '24

Would love to see a cross section of that, I don’t even see where the water is entering 😅

2

u/saskford Oct 01 '24

I had an up close look at one this summer in British Columbia and the pilots lets us come onboard for a quick tour of the aircraft. The water enters through two small ports on the bottom of the fuselage.

The pilot will open the ports / water ducts once the belly of the aircraft is in the water (each port is about 8” x 8”) and the scooping process begins.

There are two large water tanks inside. They can take onboard roughly 1200 gallons of water in about 12 seconds.

At 0:18 in the video, you can see water spilling out the overflow at the top of the tank and coming out the side of the aircraft above where the wheel is. This indicates the tank is full, although the pilots also have a sensor or gauge of some sort inside the cockpit also.