Martin Mars on display in Vancouver BC

[BLR]

The convention runs from January 15-18.

January 10, 2008
VANCOUVER SUN (FINAL)
PAGE: C3 (BUSINESSBC)

Mars water bomber to scoop, drop in harbour
Massive flying boat, mostly used in Port Alberni, recently fought California wildfires
Gordon Hamilton, Vancouver Sun

The giant Martin Mars water-bomber has targeted Vancouver harbour for its next airborne drop in a display of the Second World War veteran's modern fire-fighting capacity.

The four-engine Hawaii Mars, one of two remaining Mars flying boats, is scheduled to touch down in the harbour at 2 p.m. Tuesday, anchoring off Canada Place for the annual Truck Loggers Association convention next week at the Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre.

And on Wednesday at 3 p.m., onlookers in downtown Vancouver can expect to have a front-row view as the bomber circles the harbour and drops 27,000 kilograms of water off Canada Place, owner Wayne Coulson said Wednesday.

"We are going to scoop and drop in the harbour so people can come down and have a look at it," Coulson said in an interview.

The massive flying boats have been a part of B.C.'s fire-fighting arsenal for 47 years, but spend most of their time at the home base of Port Alberni or in action fighting fires in remote locations.

Coulson, president of the Port Alberni-based Coulson Group, bought the aircraft from forest company TimberWest Forest last spring, and has been developing them as fire-fighting tool that can be used world-wide in battling wildfires. Most recently, the Hawaii Mars was in California where it played a role in suppressing October's wild grass fires that at one point forced 500,000 people to flee their homes.

Wherever the aircraft go, they attract attention, Coulson said.

The Vancouver Island fire fighters have received approval from the Port of Vancouver for the drop.

The Mars has used the harbour before, scooping water to extinguish blazes on the North Shore mountains seven years ago.

"Everybody is anxious to see this happens successfully," said Doug Moore, marine operations coordinator for the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority. "They will be doing a fly-by and dropping in the harbour. It will be planned out to make sure there are no issues with that."

[gregv]

BLR

thanks for the heads up; think it will still be pissing rain?...

cheers

greg v.

[BLR]

A few shots of the Mars arriving in Vancouver @ 14:00 today. It did a couple passes and landed, taxied around Canada Place Convention Centre a bit and is now moored near the Convention centre.

Sorry about the photo quality, I couldn't leave work but fortunately we could see it from the office.

Tommorrow at 15:00 its scheduled to do a water drop.






Brian....

[Canso42]

Way to go Brian, More Mars pix, please. It's a shame you have such a boring view from your office. lol. Got any more flying boat pix of other planes? I'm a PBY type myself but love any flying boats. Even the most jaded basic civil av. type cant help but be awed by the Mars boats! What an airplane!!!
Being down in Texas, I'm not familiar with most of the place names mentioned here. Are you in Vancouver area? I have a friend from PBY@yahoogroups.com Stan Strazza who's a harbor dredge operator in Vancouver who's also a PBY buff.

Doug Ratchford 'Canso42'
Brenham, Tx.

[mustangdriver]

For real those are great pics

[groundpounder]

we are going to see the mars do its water drop this afternoon!! cant wait to hear those engines roar! i have a number of old pics of the mars bombers when they first came to the vancouver area years ago. they are going through their trails. if anyone wants to see them pm me and i will send them over to you. ive tried in the past to post pics here but it just never seemed to work out for me. if someone else would be brave enough to take on this task im sure they are pics that many of you would like to see. sim, the confused.

A few shots of the Mars arriving in Vancouver @ 14:00 today. It did a couple passes and landed, taxied around Canada Place Convention Centre a bit and is now moored near the Convention centre.

Sorry about the photo quality, I couldn't leave work but fortunately we could see it from the office.

Tommorrow at 15:00 its scheduled to do a water drop.

Brian....

Thanks very much for the beautiful shots of the Mars in Vancouver. I wish I could have been there. This is what I had hoped to see if one of the Mars aircraft had been acquired by the Martin Museum in Baltimore, MD and if it had flown into the harbor here. Well maybe someday when the working days are over.....

In the meantime, someday I have got to get out there and see one of those beauties in action!

[BLR]

Hi All,

I snuck away from my desk and got a few photos of the Mars demonstration today. Thanks for your kind words in regards to my pictures, but once again I apologize for the photo quality, I pushed my little Canon A620 to the limits so the photos aren’t the best. Shaking from the cold doesn’t help either!

Hopefully some other WIXers were there and got better photos. A short but very impressive display and rumour has it that there may be another display tomorrow at 11:00.

Made my day, apparently I had a goofy grin on my face when I came back to my desk.

Brian

[ww2John]

Impressive!!

[warbirdcrew]

It's a shame you have such a boring view from your office

Just wait until they finish building the new convention center. That view will be stunning

Brian, good pics of the Mars. Wish I could have been home to see that. Oh well.

[Tillerman]

Really special pictures, those big aircraft in an urban environment!
The pilots:

<a href="http://www.airlinefan.com/view_photo.php?&photoid=6565984"><img width="1024" height="698" oncontextmenu ="return false" src="http://www.airlinefan.com/photos/memberdir1/watermarked/medium_wm_8101414.jpg" border="0"/></a>

Tillerman.

[JDK]

Cleaned up link to photo:



Thanks, Tillerman, and BLR, great photos!

[DoraNineFan]

I found video of the flight demonstration. Just beautiful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOb80yTQ6AU

[warbird1]

I found video of the flight demonstration. Just beautiful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOb80yTQ6AU

Wow, very cool! I love the sound of those -3350's on takeoff. They sound really nice on my speakers. Was that plane heavy on takeoff? It seemed like it took an awful lot of takeoff distance to get airborne, and even then it just barely lumbered off the water. I would hate to think what would happen if it lost an engine. Surely, it would go down like a lead balloon.