78-07-B5
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Dulles Airport
TranscriptAmerican commercial aviation has a safety record unequaled in all the world, but even so we still occasionally hear that dreaded news flash of a plane that didn't make it. Occasionally I fly into Washington's Dulles Airport, so a recent story in Electronic Engineering Times worried me more than a little bit. The air traffic controllers, those gentlemen who sit with their eyes glued to a radar screen, "talking" planes into a safe landing at Dulles have a complaint--a very legitimate complaint. It has to do with the performance in wet weather of the Federal Aviation Administration's surface detection system. What we're talking about is the radar called the A.S.D.E.-2 which is used in bad weather to track aircraft after they drop to altitudes of 40 feet or less. The radiating antenna is housed in what is called a spherically shaped radome. That means it's in a round, ball-shaped shelter. That ball is made of rubberized canvas. When it rains or snows (which is when it's needed most) the moisture settles on the ball and is soaked up by that rubberized fabric. This reduces the power of the signal returns and the air controller sees a white spot on his screen instead of the moving blip made by the airplane he's tracking. Incidentally, this system is in use at about a dozen other airports and the same complaint is made at all of them. F.A.A. engineers have been experimenting with different designs and shapes for the radome to find an answer to the problem. They have come up with one that looks like an upside down tea cup. John Curran, Chief of the Dulles airwave facilities field office, says this shape they've found is the answer. "The moisture drops roll off the dome like rain falling off an overhanging roof" he says. Well, you'd say that solves the problem--we trade in the oversize tennis balls for over-size inverted tea cups and we're all safer on a rainy day. But hold on. Dulles airport is a federally-owned facility. The change of shape is being blocked for aesthetic reasons by the Department of Interiors Advisory Council of Historic Preservation. Washington's Fine Arts Commission also objects to the proposed new dome shape. How did they get into the act? Well, it seems that the Dulles Airport terminal building was recently nominated for the National Register of Historic Places by the Secretary of Transportation upon the advice of the Advisory Council of Historic Preservation. This is a group that oversees the care of such designated buildings. So anything that threatens to change the appearance of the airport building is carefully looked at. I hope by the time you hear this sanity has come to someone in Washington, but at the moment the new and safer dome has been rejected and the F.A.A. controllers who help get the big birds safely down has lost to the Fine Arts Commission. For me, I don't care whether it looks like an upside down tea cup or an upside down garbage can. I'm for giving those controllers what they want--especially when the weather is bad. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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