watched a big ass airplane today

there is a company out there trying to convince various firefighter organizations to hire them. they use a 747 supertanker.
today, we watched them do a demo run over the runway. this plane carries 24,000 gallons of water. that's in the general vicinity of 200,000 pounds of water or fire retardant. this picture is from their website, but it's exactly what we saw todaywhat i found amazing is that the plane was fully loaded, yet took less than 1/2 the runway to take off.
here's a ground shot from the rear. look at the difference is size between the 747 and the general avaition planes sitting around. biiig airplane. it looks like a building.