And here are a number of photos of the many aircraft that paid my little neck of the woods a visit in order to fight the massive wildfire.
Below, note that the larger aircraft tended to follow smaller “spotter” aircraft. This was especially true for the bombers.
One of the spotters emiting smoke. This, presumably, was to make them more visible to the pilots of the bombers
Note that the DC-9 lowered its landing gear during the waterbombing run. That seems odd, but I assume there’s a reason for it.
Cropdusters were not as evident as I might’ve thought they would be, but they were there, also dumping the red fire retardant.
As always, getting the aircraft into proper focus seemed virtually impossible. I wonder if it’s me or the lens. It seems unlikely to be the camera, since I’ve had two generations of Nikon D5000/D5500 and they both have trouble in focusing while at max zoom. But then, I also proved wholly unable to get the cameras to focus when attached to actual telescopes. Hmmm.