Fire spotting aircraft allegedly hits drone in Oregon
Fire Spotter Bradley Goldman thinks he may have hit a drone. Reports reached me yesterday of this incident, but Mr Goldman has broken cover on Facebook today.
I was told he was routing along the beach at Newport, Oregon on Wednesday the 13th of September at 440 feet, at about 15:00 local he struck something and landed normally.
A formal investigation is believed to be in progress, with early reports of plastic found!
I will leave it to you dear reader to decide for yourselves the veracity of Mr Goldman’s claim.
The aircraft is believed to a Rockwell Twin Commander N42ZZ, FlightAware does not seem to have a flight to cover that timeframe. http://flightaware.club/live/flight/N42ZZ
It might be that Mr Goldman was at low level and operational at the time so would not necessarily be seen by the ADS-B network.
Brad Goldman has been fighting fires for most of his adult life. It’s his passion, and for the past nearly 30 years his job, too … he’s with Snohomish County Fire District 7, in Washington state north of Seattle. Some 25 years ago he learned to fly, and it, too, became a passion. Which explains Goldman’s summer job: fighting fires from the air. Goldman owns and operates Gold Aero, Inc., based in Arlington, Washington. His two-airplane fleet—a Cessna 205 and Twin Commander 500S Shrike—function as aerial supervision aircraft over large wildland fires. An air attack supervisor in the airplane controls the airspace over the fire, and makes tactical decisions on what type of aerial resources are needed to support the ground crews battling the blaze.
http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?do=main.textpost&id=56e9977f-be8d-4a0c-9e16-b627476e7ac1
