A Balliang field is being used to help determine the best way to attack fires by air.
Emergency Services have been testing water drop patterns at the site north of Geelong on aircraft over the last week, in a bid to make future air attacks on fires as effective as possible.
“We literally measured the water drops that came from the aircraft tank as well as the spread pattern, coverage, and the amount of water used so that we can try to understand the effectiveness of wetting the ground and helping to control fires,” CFA’s Predictive Services Specialist Andy Ackland said.
The experiment using a Helitak involved five water drops over a grid of plastic cups mounted on wooden stakes placed three metres apart.
After each drop the cups were sealed with a barcoded lid and taken away to be scanned and weighed.
“It’s good that we can get some objective measurement of the performance of the different aircraft tank designs to use in certain fuel types so we can actually understand the performance
of aircraft in different circumstances, Mr Ackland said.
He hopes results later in the year will give a sharper insight into the performance of aircraft, and further trials could be carried out.
“We may still have more aircraft to test next spring but it’s going to be really good to have some of that baseline data.
“CFA scientists can look into the relative performance and we can start planning the future fleet and also factors such as positioning and the effectiveness in different parts of the state.”
