Fires in Greece

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The story's here also:

here: "Standing on the asphalt airstrip in Elefsina, Polydoras provided the first official confirmation that Greece is interested in purchasing the Beriev. 'We know the capabilities of this aircraft and we always believed it would represent a useful tool in our effort to deal with the fires. We are also looking into the possibility of buying Be-200s to replace the ageing Canadair 215,' he said. Greece has one of the largest fleets of Canadair CL-215s, but Bombardier, their Canadian manufacturer, has discontinued them in favour of the more powerful CL-415s. The estimated cost of the Beriev is 35 million euros, while the improved CL-415, used by several European countries including Greece, could cost as much as 27 million euros."

Pat

Soot can build up on the blades of the fan section of the turbofan, causing drag and lowering efficiency. They had a similar problem with gas ingestion from the 30 mm Avenger cannon on the A-10. The fan needed to be cleaned after every flight when the cannon was fired. I don't know if they ever got that fixed.

Pat

I'm sure if you ask nicely Rolls Royce could make some new ones!

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>>

Exactly! The key phrase is: "...is interested in purchasing..."! One poster said that Greece has *already* purchased/ordered these water-bombers which is inaccurate. From thinking in purchasing them to actually order/buy them it's a long way, especially in Greece;-) AFAIK they thought in buying them a couple more times in the past but the Fire Department was pronounced against it as the B-200's can not operate well in the narrow Greek valleys. Such valleys need a smaller, more flexible airplane and that's why Greece has already 24 Canadairs, not to mention the aging Pzl's and the myriad of helicopters they are hiring every year;-)

That was me. That's what the Russians are claiming in their newspaper article:

"Greece has placed an official order for 12 Be-200 amphibious planes, including firm order for six planes and the option for the remainder. It wants the first plane already by 2009, Interfax reported with reference to a source with Russia?s defense and industry community. In addition to Greece, Italy has ordered two Be-200s and Portugal needs four planes under the firm order and six planes under the option. The respective contracts are being considered now, the source said. Past year, Irkut Corp negotiated Be-200 delivery with a number of foreign states, including Spain, the United States, Turkey, Algeria, Malaysia and Indonesia. 'The plans are to supply up to 100 Be-200s to global market of aircraft by 2015,' the source specified."

Pat

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Pat, you live in the US so marketing tricks should be well known to you;-))) No seriously, there is no order or something similar! As I said that would be first page news here and there is nothing in the local papers not to mention the head lines in the TV!

What they just said in the TV is that Russia is sending a second B-200, free of charge this time for a couple a weeks and after that it will be established if it will continue to offer its *paid* services or send back to Russia. There can be talks about purchasing B-200's but if true it's only in the stage of...talking;-) This does not mean that tomorrow they may not decide to indeed buy one but for the time being there is no order, just rumors most if not all of them coming from the Russian part thirsty for orders;-)

rgrds

The article is quite accurate, that's mostly the case in areas around Athens, where it was particularly bad this year. Most of the recent fires in the Peloponnesian peninsula however were in rather remote/mountainous areas, making difficult to understand who would deliberately do such a thing. There's some nice theories, ranging from "terrorist attack" to foreign involvement, to arson by sypporters of the major opposition party so that the government looks bad (it did....). There's national elections in two weeks' time.

Interesting, however sad fact is that fires burn an area several times larger than average, each summer preceding a national election. You figure out why (hint: governments like being re-elected).

Yeah. And communism works :-)

Geo

I'll bet it was Iranians (Persians) pissed off about that movie "300". :-)

Joke regarding the Ruble from the Soviet years: "The economic system of the Soviet Union is very simple to understand: we pretend to work; they pretend to pay us."

Pat

Or arrested plane spotters