11 juillet 2023 | Local, Sécurité
Canada has wildfires every year. Why won’t it create a firefighting force?
The worst wildfire season on record has challenged the provincial firefighting resources on which the country relies.
12 mars 2019 | Local, Aérospatial
Simulating the ‘SuperScooper’
by Lisa Gordon
The Viking CL-415 “SuperScooper” is more akin to a pick-up truck than a sports car.
It's a hardworking, amphibious turboprop that was built to fight wildfires.
It flies low, battling blistering heat and blinding smoke, before releasing 13,500 pounds of water in six seconds – and then returning to a nearby lake where it skims the surface to reload.
Introduced in 1993 by Bombardier, the CL-415 was essentially a turboprop version of its predecessor, the piston-powered CL-215. Today, there are close to 170 CL-215/415 aircraft in operation, mostly in Europe and North America. They are now supported by Viking Air, which acquired the program from Bombardier in 2016.
Pilot training in the CL-415 has historically been done in the aircraft, but TRU Simulation + Training says that due to the unique mission it performs, those training flights can be dangerous.
The South Carolina-headquartered company is a division of industry giant Textron Inc., and was formed following the amalgamation of several specialty flight simulation and pilot training companies, including former Montreal-based Mechtronix.
About two years ago, TRU's commercial aviation division in Montreal began designing the world's first CL-415 full flight simulator (FFS) with the capability to replicate operations not only in the air, but also on the water. The company was able to draw on its recent experience of successfully building a Series 400 Twin Otter FFS for Canada's Pacific Sky Aviation in Calgary, Alta. – the world's first seaplane simulator with water-handling capabilities.
“Before the Twin Otter project, hydrodynamic modelling is something we hadn't done before,” acknowledged Thom Allen, TRU's vice-president of Technology and Innovation. “It's like a boat simulator because you're modelling the buoyancy of the floats or the fuselage in the water. Interestingly, our engineers working on the Twin Otter program actually went to the library and researched how boats work on the water. Mixing the boat sim with the aerodynamic sim is the whole package.”
He said the CL-415 experience took things one step further by adding the mission component – scooping the water – to the Twin Otter build.
“From a safety point of view, the types of missions you do in a waterbomber are quite a bit different from a commercial aircraft. When you're scooping water and dropping it over a fire, training in those conditions is very dangerous. The tradeoff has always been between the quality of the training and the danger of doing that sort of training.”
TRU's CL-415 FFS was delivered to Ansett Aviation Training in Milan, Italy, in September 2018 and certified by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) in December to Level D standards. Although training courses have yet to be completed in the simulator, the hope is that both initial and recurrent pilot training will be done exclusively in the device.
Allen said the operational characteristics of a CL-415 are complex and unique.
“When you're flying over a very hot fire, you drop your water and the mass of the aircraft is cut in half. The turbulence effect is quite significant when you hit the updraft. The fire is creating turbulence, smoke, reduced visibility – and pilots are dropping every five or 10 minutes repeatedly, usually in rugged terrain at low altitudes. This is the part that made this project something new.”
To gather accurate performance data, TRU rented a CL-415 and equipped it with flight test instrumentation.
“We weren't doing fire drops with our engineers on board, but we did all the manoeuvres around that, and we brought in a number of senior CL-415 pilots to evaluate our work.”
The result is the world's first high fidelity CL-415 simulator with the capability of replicating not just air and water operations, but various types and intensities of forest fires and changes in related environmental conditions. The cockpit noise level is accurately reproduced by a secondary audio system that – like the real aircraft – requires crewmembers to wear a noise-cancelling headset.
Full article: https://www.skiesmag.com/news/simulating-the-superscooper
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30 août 2019 | Local, Aérospatial
Airbus pulls out of Canada's fighter jet competition
by Murray Brewster One of the companies in the race to replace Canada's aging fleet of CF-18 jet fighters has dropped out of the competition. Airbus Defence and Space, which was pitching the Eurofighter Typhoon, notified the Liberal government Friday that it was not going to bid. The decision was made after a detailed review of the tender issued by the federal government in mid-July. The move leaves only three companies in the contest: Lockheed Martin Canada with its F-35; Boeing with the Super Hornet; and Saab, which is offering an updated version of its Gripen fighter. Simon Jacques, president of Airbus Defence and Space Canada, made a point of saying the company appreciated the professional dealings it had with defence and procurement officials. "Airbus Defence and Space is proud of our longstanding partnership with the Government of Canada, and of serving our fifth home country's aerospace priorities for over three decades," Jacques said in a statement. "Together we continue in our focus of supporting the men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces, growing skilled aerospace jobs across the country and spurring innovation in the Canadian aerospace sector." Airbus decided to withdraw after looking at the NORAD security requirements and the cost it imposes on companies outside of North America. It also said it was convinced that the industrial benefits regime, as written in the tender, "does not sufficiently value the binding commitments the Typhoon Canada package was willing to make." A controversial evaluation process After complaints from the Trump administration, the Liberal government revised the industrial benefits portion of the tender to make it more fair to Lockheed Martin. The changes to the evaluation process irked some competitors. Under long-established military procurement policy, the federal government demands companies spend the equivalent of a contract's value in Canada as a way to bolster industry in this country. The F-35 program is not structured that way. It allows Canadian companies to bid on the aircraft's global supply chain contracts. There is, however, no guarantee that they'll get any of those contracts. The recent revision ensures that Lockheed Martin will not be severely penalized for having a different system. DND staff warned to keep mum while attending air shows during fighter jet competition F-35 demo team returns to Canada this fall as fighter jet makers jockey for position Airbus, Boeing may pull out of fighter jet race they say is rigged for F-35 Last spring, Boeing executives voiced their concerns publicly during a defence trade show in Ottawa. "I was surprised by the recommended changes," said Jim Barnes, the director of business development in Canada for Boeing Defence, Space & Security. "We believe we can put a really compelling offer on the table. "You have a policy that's been in place for decades that has been very successful. The minister has mentioned this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity, so why would you deviate from a policy that has been so successful to accommodate a competitor?" https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/airbus-canada-fighters-1.5265665
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26 février 2024 | Local, Terrestre
Forces ombudsman calls on MPs to make his office independent of National Defence | CBC News
Canada’s military watchdog used what could be one of his last appearances before a House of Commons committee on Monday to renew a push to make his office fully independent from the Department of National Defence (DND).