The Hundred Dollar Hamburger » mjøsa http://www.boldevin.com Food, flying and other fun stuff... Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:15:08 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Aerial fire watch http://www.boldevin.com/2009/07/aerial-fire-watch/ http://www.boldevin.com/2009/07/aerial-fire-watch/#comments Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:38:57 +0000 Reidar J. Boldevin http://www.boldevin.com/?p=151 One of the tasks delegated to the many of the flying clubs in Norway is to fly fire watch flights. Basically the landowners pay the fire departement to keep an extra watch over the their woods, and the fire departement delegate the task to the flying clubs. It’s a cheap way to allow for early detection and damage reduction in case of fire outbreaks, and it also works as a deterrent towards campers illegally building fires.

Nedre Romerrike Flyklubb (Lower Romerrike Flying club, NRFK) which I’m a member of has the is responcible for the Oslo and Akershus county fire watches. We fly a route which normally takes around 2 hours, stretching from Mjøsa in the north east to Drammen in the south west. It’s a beautiful flight on a nice day, and the good thing about the fire watches is that they’re usually flown when the weather’s dry, thus usually very good.

I flew this flight with Kjetil Kintel. He was the Pilot in Charge (PIC) and I was the observer and had the right seat, the radio and the camera. We got some very good pictures from this flight, and even though it’s basically unpaid work, it really is a nice way to spend a couple of hours. It also looks good both on my CV and in a photo album, as shown here:

We didn’t see any actual fires this time, but I got to familirize myself with the route, and all free flying is a great thing in my book!

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