We were given a demo of the Pro/Pak portable foam generator by the sales rep, who came by our firehouse a couple of weeks ago. There is a serious intent on purchasing one of these, as it would help us off-load the pumper by 400 liters of foaming agent that we carry on top of the 2600 liters of water. One of these portable packs can deliver up to 10.000 liters of foamed mix for every 10 liters of agent! In reality, you would use medium expansion at 0.3% to 0.6%, which still provides a few thousand liters of foam. The unit is a bit heavy on the shoulder, but adequate for moderate work, such as car or garbage fires, or K type fires that are not involving other parts of the compartment or structure.

As you can see in the videos and photos, the unit is a self-contained shoulder-carried case, with three snap-on nozzles for different attack modes. One provides high-pressure, low-volume foam for long reach, the second provides also low-volume but higher concentration of foam in the stream, and the largest nozzle gives a good flow of medium-expansion, higher volume foam. The flow is controlled by the twist handle, and there is a selector for the percentage of foam mix. Using special foam agents, you can go from 0.1% to 0.6%, while standard foam requires a change in the selector by unscrewing it and screwing it back on turned 180 degrees, so that the mix ratios are 1% to 6%.

Here is a video of the unit in action:

And a picture of the demo – click on it to visit the Flickr photo stream:

I would really recommend you consider adding this to your arsenal for quick interventions, which do not require large volumes of foam projected at a distance. It’s excellent for quickly delivering a sizeable amount of foam with limited manpower and/or water supply.

Can Padro, located in near Barcelona (click for Google satellite map), is a huge fire training facility that teaches firefighters how to combat a wide range of scenarios they are likely to meet. They also have a driving track, where dangerous goods drivers take their mandatory courses, and police recruits learn how to drive defensively (but fast!).

We are considering a two-day course for our guys, which would involve LPG fires, boil-overs, fires on multiple floors, and victim search & rescue, and so we went for a visit. One of the lead instructors was kind enough to give us a tour of the facility, which has one of the biggest ship fire simulators I have personally seen. There are bigger ones, I believe the US Navy runs a full-sized one, but this one was very scary. Below is one picture in the photo set I’ve posted on Flickr, click on it to go and watch the whole set.

The HP 5850 committed suicide, and decided it would start printing stripes across documents even after changing ink, cleaning contacts, and so on. One thing I used to like about HP printers was that their ink cartridges came with their own print heads – meaning that on each change, you’d get brand new heads. Other manufacturers suffer from heads that eventually clog or need specialized cleaning, so even though the ink was more expensive in comparison, to me it was worth the stretch.

With the new Vivaro inks, however, HP has moved onto printer-bound heads, and simple cartridges. From a business perspective it makes sense – the ink feels cheaper than before to the user (9 Euros per color, or 35 for a six-color pack plus 150 10×15 photo paper sheets), and the printer can be sold for more just by adding some trimmings, such as the huge touch screen of the 8180. This printer rocks – really. It connected to my WiFi network with no hassle, and was setup and configured with the HP driver on my Mac Pro, thus giving me access to printing, scanning and even the memory card reader, over WiFi.

One thing I didn’t appreciate, but which fortunately you can turn off in the preferences, is that after each printing action, the LCD  display starts showing a “tips slideshow”, which tells you how good HP’s photo paper is, how original supplies are way better for your printer, or that you can actually use the memory card slots to print your photos directly (duh! I thought they were just convenient holders for my cards so I would not missplace them!).