Penticton's famed air tankers, top pilot go out in style

Every year about this time, the three air tankers that call Penticton home during fire season head south for the winter. To Abbotsford to be exact, where they undergo their annual off-season servicing -- essentially a complete nose-to-tail physical that'll get them ready for the following spring.

And today they began that journey. One by one the trio of Conair Convairs that together have fought hundreds of wildfires throughout the southern BC interior since the turn of the century were fired up by the pilots who've repeatedly flown them into conflict, taxied into position and propelled into the evening sky.

Only this time none of them would be returning. They are all being retired, and in their place the Penticton Air Tanker Base gets a pair of bigger, faster, better, newer Dash 8-400s in 2023.

But the trio of tankers weren't the evening's only retirement. Long-time pilot Grahame "Whiskey " Wilson, the longest serving Convair pilot in the region, a guy with 40 years of experience and 20 years with the Convairs alone, opted to bow out with them.

"I'm over 65 and so are the airplanes, and they're going," he said. "So I thought that would be a perfect time to retire." (For the full story, turn here.)

But Wilson and Convair #55, the only plane he's piloted since 2012, the one he says "always brings me home," weren't about to go off into the night without one final thrill.

And so just before dinner hour, Wilson looped around after take-off and made one last approach to YYF.

In front of them was pilot Dean Austin in his "Bird Dog" aircraft, the very same plane that regularly guides the Convairs into battle. Austin does that by ejecting a smoke trail where he wants the tankers to drop their retardant.

And that's what he did tonight, ceremonially, directly over the YYF runway.

A few seconds later, Wilson and the Convair, swooping down to perhaps 100 feet above the ground, dropped a load of water approximately 5,000 feet long -- right on the tarmac.

It was…just…awesome.

Now, the Penticton Air Tanker Base lays empty. It'll fire up again in spring, in plenty of time for the arrival of the sleek new tankers.

But the old guard and the guy who took them into war more often than anyone else, will be missed.