FAA brings mobile ATC to Key West

RyanB

RyanB

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Thought this was quite cool.

Quoted from the FAA:

"September 18–Yesterday, a mobile air traffic control tower arrived at Key West International Airport in Florida after a road trip down the East Coast by trailer from Hartford, CT. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) repositioned the fully-equipped tower to provide air traffic services for all of the aircraft operating in and out of Key West that are supporting the relief and recovery of the isolated Florida Keys in the wake of Hurricane Irma.

The FAA also has temporarily located many of the tower’s controllers closer to the airport to reduce lengthy commutes.

In addition to the mobile tower, the FAA has brought a trailer to the site to support the tower controllers with an air-conditioned break room and lavatories. Before the tower arrived, controllers were managing air traffic at the airport from a small tent.

As controllers started working the radios in the new mobile tower at Key West this morning, the FAA was making plans to pack up another mobile tower it airlifted to St. Thomas last week and temporarily relocate it to a safer mainland position in advance of Hurricane Maria. The tower will remain on a military C-17 until the storm passes and will immediately head back to St. Thomas after the storm.

The FAA also has been supporting the Florida recovery effort by authorizing drone operations around the state to aid rapid damage assessment. To date, the FAA has authorized 173 drone operations for the area damaged by Hurricane Irma, and 121 of those are still in effect. The primary authorized drone operations are supporting power and insurance companies."
 
Hmm .... I wonder what Jimmy Buffett would say. After all it does look like a mobile home.


"And mobile homes are smotherin' my keys;
Well I hate those bastards so much.
I wish a summer squall would blow them
all the way up to fantasy land.
They're ugly and square, they don't belong here.
They look a lot better as beer cans."
 
This is what we had in the Air Force. After unloading, took about 6-8 hours to become operational. I was deployed to Quonset State airport during the controller's strike and this what we brought with us. We also had a mobile radar that could provide full blown approach control services w/ a PAR on it for precision approaches.

Mobile%20Tower%20End%20Shot.jpg
mpn_14_sonto_cano_ab.jpg
 
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SkyDog58 said:
Hmm .... I wonder what Jimmy Buffett would say. After all it does look like a mobile home.


"And mobile homes are smotherin' my keys;
Well I hate those bastards so much.
I wish a summer squall would blow them
all the way up to fantasy land.
They're ugly and square, they don't belong here.
They look a lot better as beer cans."
Click to expand...

Jimmy Buffet requested this one for Key West:

2001707.JPG
 
Lol! Looks like something jerry-rigged in the 70s. What ever works I guess.

What we rolled with in the Marines. Set up in a couple of days. VFR tower with IFR approach & GCA.

http://vipclubmn.org/ATCntl/MATCALS.pdf
 
Velocity173 said:
What we rolled with in the Marines. Set up in a couple of days. VFR & IFR.

http://vipclubmn.org/ATCntl/MATCALS.pdf
Click to expand...

Couple of days! Jeez! Air Force had 8 hours for the tower and TACAN, 22 hours for the radar. We usually got 'er done in less time than that, and then a USAF C-140 would flight check the radar and TACAN.

Go Air Force!

c140-3.jpg
 
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mscard88 said:
Couple of days! Jeez! Air Force had 8 hours for the tower and TACAN, 22 hours for the radar. We usually got 'er done in less time than that, and then a USAF C-140 would flight check the radar.

Go Air Force!

c140-3.jpg
Click to expand...

Yeah, when it arrives we'd be setup that day. I'm talking FRAGO to load on C-5 til operational. 48 hrs anywhere in the world...with autoland capability.

Oorah!
 
Still got ya beat, but it did take 3 days to get the tower loaded and flown on a C-141 during Grenada. I think the first 141 broke at Patrick, then getting a replacement took a couple days, something like that. And we were a part of the Rapid Deployment Force back then lol.
 
IMG_2944.JPG All you really need are a few CCT guys, a table and a PRC. ;)
 
Yep. We would go on exercisess from Patrick to Avon Park and Samford mostly. Start w/ a Jeep w/ UHF & VHF radio (simulating just arriving) while the tower was being set-up. At Granada our guys relieved a couple of CCTs when they finally got there. Boys said the CCTs said "where the hell you been, here, you got a C141....." and they were gone.
 
mscard88 said:
This is what we had in the Air Force. After unloading, took about 6-8 hours to become operational. I was deployed to Quonset State airport during the controller's strike and this what we brought with us. We also had a mobile radar that could provide full blown approach control services w/ a PAR on it for precision approaches.

Mobile%20Tower%20End%20Shot.jpg
mpn_14_sonto_cano_ab.jpg
Click to expand...
The proximity of the antenna to the cab explains a lot. How much time did you spend in the cab?
 
Clark1961 said:
The proximity of the antenna to the cab explains a lot. How much time did you spend in the cab?
Click to expand...

The shifts were 8 hours but could go to 10 if required. These were Air Force regs during peace time. A war? Who knows, whatever it took. At Quonset during the FAA controller strike we covered 2 shifts per day, I think one day off a week but might have been two. We had the Chief screw up and was yanked out. I was next in line so I became the tower chief. As we only had two controllers qualified as supervisors, myself and the other guy worked about three weeks straight before headquarters sent another controller up and we resumed normal work schedules.
 
mscard88 said:
The shifts were 8 hours but could go to 10 if required. These were Air Force regs during peace time. A war? Who knows, whatever it took. At Quonset during the FAA controller strike we covered 2 shifts per day, I think one day off a week but might have been two. We had the Chief screw up and was yanked out. I was next in line so I became the tower chief. As we only had two controllers qualified as supervisors, myself and the other guy worked about three weeks straight before headquarters sent another controller up and we resumed normal work schedules.
Click to expand...
And were you compensated for the exposure to various electromagnetic radiation?
 
Clark1961 said:
Okay then. Rehab may be an option but you will have to modify your microwave oven and subject yourself to the Christian channel on cable.
Click to expand...

But I've been doing that for years. So I got that going for me. Which is nice.
 
IMG_2945.GIF The commo antennas aren't a problem. We were told, just don't stand in front of the ASR or the PAR antennas...I never listened to that advice. o_O
 
The square rectangular upright was the PAR antenna. Definitely don't stand in front of that. Or the surveillance antenna either.

IMG_3067.JPG
 
Ryanb said:
View attachment 56463
Thought this was quite cool.

Quoted from the FAA:

"September 18–Yesterday, a mobile air traffic control tower arrived at Key West International Airport in Florida after a road trip down the East Coast by trailer from Hartford, CT. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) repositioned the fully-equipped tower to provide air traffic services for all of the aircraft operating in and out of Key West that are supporting the relief and recovery of the isolated Florida Keys in the wake of Hurricane Irma.

The FAA also has temporarily located many of the tower’s controllers closer to the airport to reduce lengthy commutes.

In addition to the mobile tower, the FAA has brought a trailer to the site to support the tower controllers with an air-conditioned break room and lavatories. Before the tower arrived, controllers were managing air traffic at the airport from a small tent.

As controllers started working the radios in the new mobile tower at Key West this morning, the FAA was making plans to pack up another mobile tower it airlifted to St. Thomas last week and temporarily relocate it to a safer mainland position in advance of Hurricane Maria. The tower will remain on a military C-17 until the storm passes and will immediately head back to St. Thomas after the storm.

The FAA also has been supporting the Florida recovery effort by authorizing drone operations around the state to aid rapid damage assessment. To date, the FAA has authorized 173 drone operations for the area damaged by Hurricane Irma, and 121 of those are still in effect. The primary authorized drone operations are supporting power and insurance companies."
Click to expand...
Air conditioned break Room?? Nice. They could make money on that. $5 a minute.
 
NoHeat said:
Looks like a big air conditioner strapped to a small cab.

I suppose the big a/c makes sense, to sit in what's essentially a glass greenhouse in the Virgin Islands.
Click to expand...
It's not all about comfort. I think that unit is self contained. Ya gotta keep the radios cool.
 
Dumb question: Why do the windows angle downward on the cab that's essentially at ground level?
 
luvflyin said:
You don't want to be sticking body parts between the horn and the dish. You can cook food doing that.
Click to expand...

Usually 10 GHz isn't so good at cooking food.

But yeah, tender things like your eyeballs and brain cells don't like those frequencies at the power levels needed for an ASR.

Dad said it would definitely scramble the brains or whatever on board nav seagulls have, and certain radar techs may or may not have spent some time "shooting down" said birds, long enough ago that the statute of limitations has expired and nobody involved is still living under the UCMJ anyway. LOL!

Generally as frequency and power go up, you don't want to be too close to it. Thank goodness for well focused non-leaky antenna systems and the distance-squared rule for power levels.

An acquaintance works on the stuff the military made to disperse crowds with high power RF. Sounds like being targeted by one of those would be quite uncomfortable.

He's a whiz at designing RF circuits at microwave frequencies. He holds a number of world records for microwave radio contacts at incredible distances.

I forget the exact frequency, but just like roughly 2.4 GHz excites and is attenuated by water (your microwave oven really heats the water molecules in your food, not the food itself so much) -- I remember talking to him about something completely unrelated one time (strangely I was able to help him as a friend of a friend kind of thing with some Linux junk), and him remarking that he had to skip some frequency around 300 GHz in his world record attempts -- because all the transmitter would do is heat up oxygen molecules...

Since the atmosphere kinda has a bunch of those, the effective distance was nearly nothing for reception of the signal, and he would have basically designed an RF powered air heater.

There's a couple of radio sites I've worked on that required RF monitoring devices to be worn by anyone climbing the towers.

And one site used to have a wicked cool tracking array for TV helicopter downlink video that put out enough power at a low enough height off of the ground that it had warning lights and sirens that activated whenever it was remotely commanded on from the TV station's engineering department. The warning signs near Das Blinkenlights "recommended" not being in the beam path of the dual dish antennas as they automatically tracked the helicopter during live shots.

Eventually they got that thing a lot higher off the ground and removed the need for the lights and sirens, but it was still one of the reasons for the wearable RF monitors.

I never liked our old tower at that site. Too many high RF signs where it was in the path. Much happier to climb there and do work on stuff after we moved to one of the rearmost towers from the front of the mountain overlooking the town. Everything was aimed the other way.
 
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NoHeat said:
Looks like a big air conditioner strapped to a small cab.

I suppose the big a/c makes sense, to sit in what's essentially a glass greenhouse in the Virgin Islands.
Click to expand...

On the USAF TSW-7 Mobile Tower there were 3 UHF receivers plus a 243.0 receiver, 2 VHF receivers plus 121.5 receiver. Designed for 3 controllers so between heat rom the radios and the "hot" controllers a/c was definitely required.
 
Lindberg said:
Dumb question: Why do the windows angle downward on the cab that's essentially at ground level?
Click to expand...

No not a dumb question. I don't know the official answer but I would guess tp prevent glare and reflections from inside the tower projecting onto the windows and "bouncing" it up to the ceiling. This enables controllers to clearly see aircraft as a result.
 
35 AoA said:
did that C-140 fly in Nam or Grenada? looks that way :)
Click to expand...

I was just thinking, what do you all use at the boat for flight checks anyway? Specially configured C-2 or something???
 
denverpilot said:
Usually 10 GHz isn't so good at cooking food.

But yeah, tender things like your eyeballs and brain cells don't like those frequencies at the power levels needed for an ASR.

Dad said it would definitely scramble the brains or whatever on board nav seagulls have, and certain radar techs may or may not have spent some time "shooting down" said birds, long enough ago that the statute of limitations has expired and nobody involved is still living under the UCMJ anyway. LOL!

Generally as frequency and power go up, you don't want to be too close to it. Thank goodness for well focused non-leaky antenna systems and the distance-squared rule for power levels.

An acquaintance works on the stuff the military made to disperse crowds with high power RF. Sounds like being targeted by one of those would be quite uncomfortable.

He's a whiz at designing RF circuits at microwave frequencies. He holds a number of world records for microwave radio contacts at incredible distances.

I forget the exact frequency, but just like roughly 2.4 GHz excites and is attenuated by water (your microwave oven really heats the water molecules in your food, not the food itself so much) -- I remember talking to him about something completely unrelated one time (strangely I was able to help him as a friend of a friend kind of thing with some Linux junk), and him remarking that he had to skip some frequency around 300 GHz in his world record attempts -- because all the transmitter would do is heat up oxygen molecules...

Since the atmosphere kinda has a bunch of those, the effective distance was nearly nothing for reception of the signal, and he would have basically designed an RF powered air heater.

There's a couple of radio sites I've worked on that required RF monitoring devices to be worn by anyone climbing the towers.

And one site used to have a wicked cool tracking array for TV helicopter downlink video that put out enough power at a low enough height off of the ground that it had warning lights and sirens that activated whenever it was remotely commanded on from the TV station's engineering department. The warning signs near Das Blinkenlights "recommended" not being in the beam path of the dual dish antennas as they automatically tracked the helicopter during live shots.

Eventually they got that thing a lot higher off the ground and removed the need for the lights and sirens, but it was still one of the reasons for the wearable RF monitors.

I never liked our old tower at that site. Too many high RF signs where it was in the path. Much happier to climb there and do work on stuff after we moved to one of the rearmost towers from the front of the mountain overlooking the town. Everything was aimed the other way.
Click to expand...
What do figure is happening by PASY, PADK and PAKO? PASY seems to be rotating and the other two some kind of spot beam?
 
luvflyin said:
Maybe they just shoot a coupla approaches and Paddles says "looks good to me"
Click to expand...

Ha! It might be that simple. Yeah I never thought about what they use out there.

We always used FAA King Airs and Challengers for station and expeditionary gear in the Marines. In the Army we had our own C-12s or if emergency approach, just did a tactical flight check internally.
 
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