Chopper Ride

Last week I had the great opportunity to ride in a helicopter over a recently burned area of sand pine scrub in the Ocala National Forest. When the offer came up I was really excited to jump on it. First off, this was my first ride in an helicopter and compounding that, the chance to fly over both my study area and a fresh scrub burn, was nearly too good to be true!

The above helicopter was not the one we flew in! It was huge. This Sikorsky was flown in from the Pacific NW somewhere and will be stationed in the Central FL region to support our wildfire season until the summer rains kick in.


Our helicopter was a Bell Super on contract from a company out of Pensacola. It had seats for four or five passengers in the back and two pilots up front. The pilots and ground crew guys gave us a good safety briefing and were open to flying over whatever we wanted to see in our study area. Everyone at the Dispatch Center and air operations that we met that day were just top-notch and very friendly. After gearing up, borrowing some helmets and nomex gloves, we were off!


The view was amazing! It sure beats the details I'm accustomed to from staring at satellite imagery. The ride was impressively smooth considering the lake wind advisory that was in effect.


The fire that we looked at first had just been extinguished the day prior after burning nearly 1200 acres within a Navy bombing range. The fire started from a bomb that hit outside the target area but still safely within the bounds of the range.


You can see above the crater and blast from the bomb that started it all. The blast snapped off pole-class trees for several meters beyond the impact. You can see the fire spread from there to the upper left corner of the image.


We were particularly interested in the variations and patterns of the burn as evident above. The USFS lit back-burns and flanking fires along the roads to reduce the fuels ahead of and along the sides of the fire. The resulting fire didn't damage any property or harm the bombing range and it was merely a matter of time before a bomb lit off the scrub. Hopefully our lab will be able to investigate some of those burn severity patterns.

You can see in this image, the point of impact and the subsequent spread of the fire in a southwesterly direction. The burn in the bottom right corner of the image may have been a backing fire lit by the USFS.


The bombing range itself was pretty fascinating to fly over. The Navy has all sorts of old military equipment ready to be blown to smithereens.


Including an entire mock-town built out of shipping containers used for practicing laser targeting. Pretty impressive from the air.


Finally, on our way back we flew low over Silver Glenn Springs. The springs were beautiful and the view couldn't be beat! The trip was great and the pilots and USFS folks were all outstanding. Hopefully we'll get to look into some of the nitty-gritty details of the bombing range fire, but we'll have to wait and see.