Hi there.
Here in Australia our current govt has decided to get rid of their c130H aircraft and make the flight and ground crews redundant. As a natural resource manager I've been trying to lobby the govt about utilising the aircraft in aerial bushfire fighting. We current hire two heavy lift helicopters, but I see practicality rather than politcis and the cost doesn't make sense. So I need to build up a knowledge based research by those who use c-130h or J series for aerial firefighting. I was looking at the procedure to use infred scoping of fire fronts, tank engineering and rear door water release systems, using gravity and planes momentum and the experience of using the aircraft in high convection updrafts. Our canopy high intensity forest fires are the equivalent of your Pine forest high intensity fires so procedures would be closely related. We have many resevoirs, large farm dams and coastal rivers, all with alluvial flats that can have excavated runways. Ground support vehicles can carry pumps, foam and hoses to each runway location and tight formation flying can dump water/foam mixtures across a fire front over a quantified length to satisfactory suppress the fire fronts high intensity canopy habit.
I know there's a world of C130 lovers out there, I also thought of Caribou aircraft being utilised in remote steep sided valleys and spot spraying. Co-ordinating both fixed wing and then secondary helicopter drops could suppress several hundred metres of fire front with each pass.
So can anyone help me?