FIREPIRATES.COM video

AYE, me mateys and me beauties, this be the video page. You be a'sendin' your clip to me and I may be a'postin' it here - or maybe not. And you know the rules. No bilge rat scurvy posts!

Here's for starters:

All ye pirates and wannabes, take heed here. Ye all, one and all, unless ye be kids and lil' ones, will fairly well crap yer britches when ye see this. It seems that Senior Pirate Tom Stein has a spawn by the name of Tom Stein, Jr., and it seems to be a fact, mateys, that
Tom Stein, Jr. is a fureakin' genius. And ye should pour ye a small mug o'rum or some such, settle yer arse down and prepare for big funs and WATCH THIS ... the Pirate Spawn has made us a video movie clip from some of his old family home movies ... and it weren't just painless for him to do it, either. Big thanks to Tom Stein Jr. for this priceless piece of history.

... And here we have a spot of commentary sent to Tom Stein, Jr., from Cap'n Kenny Chapman, who spent his wonderbread years at Hemet:
Enjoyed your video more than you can imagine. I could recognize a lot of the folks in the video. The shots from the tower when there were so many aircraft was in fall of 1970. Inside the tower you can see Bill Dale sitting by the time clock. All the other folks aren't identifiable because they are FAA tower operators brought in for the fires. The guy in the white shirt in '74 is Walt Groom. The guy standing on the wing in the blue shirt in '72 is John Norman. The guy kneeling on the ground while they are loading is Jim Stone, who was your dad's working partner at Hemet for many years. I was absolutely amazed when I saw the picture of the cannon. I didn't know anyone had pictures of it. Just so you know, it might not have gone off during the video, but it would shoot a pop can full of dirt clear down to the hangar. The pictures of 54 making the water drop - that was flown by Sonny Morrison and Bobby "Little Jeeter" Kosar in 1969. The pictures where the center section of 54 is painted white were in 1970 after it came back from Chile - it was flown by Pete Fahm and Vern Schindele. During one of the 7-day water drops (back then if you didn't fly for 7 days you had to make a water drop), your dad parked that little green VW out in the middle of the grass and said "Here, wash my car." The drop promptly wrapped the windshield around the steering wheel and your dad drove it back home to Riverside just like that. I have a slide that I need to copy of Graff lighting off the prototype cannon behind the shop. It's not the big one (which BTW was made from Lloyd Venable's boat trailer), but a small version about a foot tall, more like a mortar. The video is a real treasure and I surely appreciate your sharing it. It brought back some very fond memories. Keep up the good work!

The webwench was so inspired by the video put together by a Collings Foundation pilot Jimmy Rollison, with his and Jim Harley's photos, that she had to try one just for the FIREPIRATES. Here's the M-1 version, and [[[[TAA·DAA]]]] the M-2 version.

This page will later have multitudinous video clips of the fun variety, but here's just a couple to whet your pirate appetite. Click on the nice photo above to see the nice video clip. This is the flyover I did for Kenneth Perry's 2005 RUN for the WILDLAND FIREFIGHTER FOUNDATION, video clip courtesy of The Lovely Beth.

Click the photo above to see what Pete sent in -- a great video clip of Carl Dolbeare taking off with a load in T-99 from Alamogordo. This was a June 2002 flight to a fire on the Santa Fe National Forest, with John Attardo in the right seat. They were departing to the south, and turned off to the east. If you got yer 'puter lined in to your stereo speakers, turn it up! .... BLUE SKIES CARL ....

Here's another from Pete -- Tanker 65 departing south from Alamogordo, headed to Silver City ATB in June 2002. T-65 had made a drop on a fire on the Lincoln NF earlier that day and stopped in to Alamogordo to stand by. Later that afternoon they headed home unloaded to Silver.

And looky here! Someone caught Brentley in action at Missoula this summer! Some of us privileged few actually saw it live.

And here we have a sweeeeeeet shot of the DC-10 on the Rico Fire. From someone pretending to be Ray!