Martin Mars may be staying in California

Gents:
Somebody pre-empted me as I was about to post the same Mars landing sequence photos, but pasted together in a continuous strip. They are quite impressive when they are pasted together however the trick is getting the strip under 300 MB to be able to post it. I believe the photo credits go to M/Gen Brian Vernon. In speaking with my brother a few nights back, he told me that someone on the landing approach shoreline of Lake Elsinore had taken a nice seqence of pictures and these appear to be them.

Although these shots are similar to ones already posted in this thread, they clearly show the finesse required to operate the Mars in such small reservoirs. My brother has had to grease the bird onto the water within 100 ft. of the downwind end of the lake (when there is any wind!) in order to have a fighting chance at grabbing a 50-60% load. Under ideal conditions, a pick-up run will be 25-30 seconds however the best he has been able to do in Elsinore is @18 seconds translating to a ~5000 USgal load. To do this, he carries minimal fuel and uses 1.8 of the 3 miles available for the pick-up and then needs the remainder to build the Mars’ airspeed up to a minimum engine-out airspeed of @120 mph prior to over-flying houses and trees. Every (pick-up) departure from Elsinore is done with the “thumb on the dump button” for obvious reasons. Working out of that duck pond has required the use of all his old float-flying tricks including circular take-offs, downwind runs to get on the step, etc. When he described his approach to land in the first 100 ft of Lake Elsinore, it harkened back to our early flying days at Pitt Meadows, B.C. where we won the combined spot-landing/flour-bombing trophy in my Citabria at the 25th anniversary fly-in/air-show (he as pilot, yours truly as bombardier). He has always had the midas touch for spot landing airplanes, of any size, and it clearly shows in these photos. I guess all this just serves to reinforce the old adage that “runway behind you is wasted real estate”. We were both taught by our old instructor (in Fleet Canucks) that if you did not touch down on the numbers and/or make the first turn-off, you had better not show your face in the airport coffee shop……extremely valuable coaching for Mars operations at Lake Elsinore!!! As for the question re: would he rather be flying something newer? I can comment that for water bomber pilots in general, “programmable” airplanes have very little appeal. Flying the biggest “day-VFR” airplane in the world, and a boat to boot, does have a good deal of that appeal.
Mk.1
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