Preliminary examination of C-130 flight loads in aerial firefighting operations

Abstract

In-flight recorded data from two EC-130Q and two L-382G aircraft have been used to analyze their flight loads while flown as aerial firefighters. The data was collected over the calendar years 2016-2019 and consisted of 928 hours of flight time. The analysis has been limited to airborne phases of flight. Vertical accelerations have been filtered using a low-pass filter with an 8-Hz cutoff frequency to remove the any influence of the local or structural vibrations. Gust and maneuver load factor spectra have been developed for various altitude bands. The magnitude and the frequency of the incremental load factors have been shown to be most severe during the drop phases of firefighting missions. Flight loads spectra have been compared with those from various other operations.