I am a geologist for the National Park Service in Denver with a side interest (OK, obsession) with interesting looking aircraft. The Bronco has long been one of my favorites. About 1994, when the BLM acquired several for fire fighting duties, one was converted to a "photography platform". A variety of still and video cameras were installed and operated from the rear seat, including a video camera and a Hasselblad large-format camera installed in the clear bubble on the bottom rear of the main fuselage. The video camera was controlled by the box you see mounted on the floor of the rear seat, between the observer's legs. He had real time control, capable of moving and panning both cameras with a small joystick. The video was displayed on the monitor.

At that time, a huge expanse of BLM land in Southern California was transferred to NPS management, now called the Mojave National Preserve. There were, and are, something like 10,000 mines, mining claims, glory holes, pits, etc, and our office [The National Park Service - MSW] was looking for a relatively fast way to inventory all of them. Although it was a Bureau of Land Management project, the Park Service office contracted with them to fly a pilot study over the Mojave Preserve trying to get a preliminary inventory of abandoned mine sites. I remembered reading in a BLM publication about the converted Bronco and we were able to contact them in Boise. The photography crew arranged to meet with us at Centennial Airport just south of Denver. We spent an afternoon with them and eventually contracted to have them perform some preliminary work over the Preserve. I know that some flights were done and we received images, but a debate over funding killed the project. The last I heard from the OAS officer in the Colorado State BLM office was that the entire concept of a air photo platform was abandoned, the photographic gear was removed, and the plane reverted back to FAC for fires. That would have been around late 1995 or early 1996.

When the plane was at Centennial, I did a pretty thorough walk around with both 35mm slides and a Hi-8 video. I'd be more than happy to share all of it with you.