Warbird Information Exchange

Can anyone recomend a modern fire extinguisher that'll fit in the door on a T-6? Greg Vallero valdez25@excite.com

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T-6F, N81857
warbirdridesusa@gmail.com

any small car sized bottle will fit, but in mho, the bottle in the back seat is worthless, there should be one in the front seat, and preferable a fire bottle system installed in the engine compartment. All should be a Halon type system.

I'm with Matt on the engine compartment fire bottle system but I've never actually seen one in a T-6/SNJ. Still, it sure would provide some piece of mind if we had one in our SNJ-5. I hate airplane fires.

The only in flight fire I've ever experienced was in our SNJ-5. It involved one of the lights over the fuel guages on the floor between the front and back seats. One of the wires shorted out and was burning itself away like cannon fuse. The guy in the back started yelling "Fire! Fire!" but all I could see was the reflection of the sparks and small flames in the instrument glass. There was no fire extinguisher attached to the inside of the door in the back seat but I think the guy behind me sure wished there was one there that day. Once I turned the master off, the fire went out pretty fast but still, it managed to burn up about four feet of wire. I'm not sure a small fire bottle would have done any good that day but it probably would not have made things any worse.

*I guess I probably should not be offering advise on this subject because we still don't have a fire bottle in the back seat. Do as I say and not as I do, right Greg?

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Albert Stix Jr.
"Work is the curse of the drinking class"

Why was that wire allowed to burn? The fuse/circuit breaker should have tripped, or opened that circuit long before that wire got that hot.

Proper maintenance goes a long way towards preventing inflight emergencies.

I had two halon bottles in my T-6, one in each cockpit. The one in the rear was important because it was available while the aircraft was on the ground, to a ground crewman.

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If God had wanted man to fly behind a flat motor, Pratt Whitney would've built one.

In our case, a post flight inspection turned up evidence that the fuel guage lights had been installed by somebody who had no business working on an aircraft. We have owned the plane since the late 1970s so the bogus wiring on those lights had been there for many years, just like a snake coiled up in the grass waiting to bite somebody in the ankle.

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Albert Stix Jr.
"Work is the curse of the drinking class"

One thing to keep in the back of your mind about Halon usage is that in confined areas, once the concentration goes beyond 5% by volume, the area is considered to be non-life supportable.... So, if you have to use one in the cockpit, take a deep breath and hold it prior to discharge and ventilate as quick as you can. Even as drafty as a T-6 cockpit can be, if you have to use one in there, it will take 15-20 seconds to clear the cockpit with the canopies open. From memory without pulling the MSDS sheets, the toxic threshold for life is in the PPB range. It wouldn't serve you too well to put the fire out and then crash due to gassing yourself in the process. Even as lethal as it can be, it's still the best by far for any type fire in the aircraft.

So you need to install both Halon AND oxygen!

Halon system at firewall. halon bottle at each seat and parachutes.