The Beacon, The Tower, & Jodie
This is a true story.
Long ago and far away, on an airport that shall forever remain unidentified, the guvmint required a new beacon light atop a water tower on the airport. No problem. The beacon was obtained and the airport authority hired a local electrical firm to install it exactly as specified by the guvmint. Measurements were taken.
Panic! A major problem appeared. The tower was barely within the height limit allowed by the feds. If the beacon was installed as per specs the tower—with beacon—would become ever so slightly taller than allowed.
There was a much-learned discussion about this problem. Careful reading of guvmint regulations made it clear that the beacon installation couldn’t be changed in any way. Likewise, the tower—with beacon—absolutely, positively, could not be even one inch taller than specified. What to do? The problem seemed insolvable.
Then Jodie, an electrician’s assistant, spoke up. Jodie was a local fellow untrained in the intricacies of guvmint airport regulations. He was not a trained engineer. Nobody had asked his opinion.
But Jodie was one of those fellows blessed with a super abundance of common sense. “Ain’t y’all got a dump truck?” he asked. “Dump truck!” was the amazed response. “How could we solve this with a dump truck?”
“Well,” Jodie said, “you could shorten the tower. Just dump a bunch of dirt all around the tower. That’d make the tower shorter from the ground to the top.”
That’s what they did. I’ve flown in and out of that airport several times, but I just learned this story last week. As far as I know, dirt, tower, and beacon are all still there.
I think we should find Jodie and send him to Washington. Who knows, he might come up with a solution to our financial fiasco. In the meantime, if the guvmint wants to pursue this story, well, it’s really not true, after all. It’s a lie. Shoot, everybody knows I lie a lot.
We’d love to post your comments. Please click the comment tab at the top.
R, Great column; great reader response! Clyde
R,I think some of your readers must be engineers & therefore missed your your point in a very good story.Lighten up guys!
Clyde
Good call on the working of the Part 77 surfaces Yard Dart. I’m sure Ralph understands how it works but, having dealt with this issue again and again, I am equally sure most others reading the column thought it was a real situation and a real solution.
Land use compatibility zoning around airports has been an important issue for a long time. It is becoming more of an issue as development continues to occur at each airport and the community surrounding it. The frustrating thing is that solving it is both simple and complex at the same time (gee, doublespeak, can you tell I work for the gov’t?).
It’s simple from the standpoint that safety for aerial navigation and for those on the ground has to be the number one concern. Reasonable regulations need to be enacted to make the areas around our airports as safe as possible.
It’s complex from the standpoint that consideration must be given to the property rights of the landowners around the airports. Often the owners purchased the land long after the airport was built so the airport’s point of view may tend toward less sympathy for their side of the argument since the landowners “knew what they were getting into” but that’s not the right approach. Strict measures might be best for safety but to what extreme? I do tend to lean strongly toward the safety side of the argument but regulations should be the minimum necessary to meet safety needs and any federal requirements. They must also leave owners with a reasonable use of their property. Now in some cases there may not be much wiggle room as we might like because Federal regulations may be pretty clear and pretty strict (read the wildlife mitigation AC some time and think about how many ponds are within 10,000’ of the AOA of your airport if you serve turbine aircraft)
Various states handle this in different ways from relatively tight regulations to virtually nothing at all. There is no real standard and the FAA is little help even though any airport accepting federal grants does have to agree to grant assurances, one of which states: “Compatible Land Use. It (the airport sponsor) will take appropriate action, to the extent reasonable, including the adoption of zoning laws, to restrict the use of land adjacent to or in the immediate vicinity of the airport to activities and purposes compatible with normal airport operations, including landing and takeoff of aircraft.” I’ve not heard of the FAA being draconian in holding anyone strictly to this grant assurance but that doesn’t guarantee they won’t at some point in time.
Without more Federal guidance and support we will continue to see a mix of approaches to this problem. Those airports attempting to be more aggressive in dealing with this issue will continue to hang it out there for angry landowners to sue. The FAA needs to give this some serious study based on conditions today and then they need to provide a better set of recommendations and regulations to help address the issue.
Okay, I’ll put away the soapbox now…
Yard-
By golly, tell you what–why don’t you keep sending your comments. It’s good to have someone commenting about these things. If you ever wish to lose the anonymity, just comment under your real name without mentioning “Yard.” In the meantime, its fun responding to “Yard.”
Ralph Hood
I would hope my mom would object to ‘yard dart’ as a name but my father maybe not. I am completely for less government but there is a need for more gov’t or at least more community education to protect our airports airspace. Most people don’t understand our local government (not the FAA) is the only government that can restrict objects near an airport.
Now let me rant: according to the FAA & Advisory Circulars airports are discouraged from building places of congregation inside runway protection zones. According to the FAA Central & Great Lakes region an airport can build a parking garage in the RPZ but the Southern region airports can not. We wouldn’t want consistancy would we. Good job FAA - you really make TSA jealous.
Next rant: Clear Areas - those pesky 1,000′ areas at the end of each runway for early landings or additional area for takeoffs. FAA says, we can build an engineered material arresting system (EMAS) to alleviate not having the required 1,000′. An EMAS is an acceptable means of safety but it is not an acceptable means of compliance. Huh? I know of an airport that has 2 EMAS beds that cost $10 million to build; they will need to rebuild those beds after 10 years (if not earlier). So every 10 years this airport will spend $10 million because someone working for government didn’t plan or zone these areas as airport interest. The original special interest group ESCO was bought by a foreign company Zodiac which increased their products cost by 50% so those beds will likely be rebuilt at $15 million. By the way - those 2 EMAS beds after 3 years need $500,000 for maintenance and that airport has spent $200,000+ because of a couple tests accidently by vehicles.
My point is, not many people understand airspacing including our government but it is critical that our government oversee airspacing. We need to educate our local government to ask airports before they issue building permits. We spend too much money fixing short sighted planning and to special interests such as ESCO’s/Zodiac EMAS beds. This airport industry needs less government but better regulation - since when in our government’s history has that happened? Since I named names I prefer to be anonymous. Thanks.
Mr. Dart–
Yes, I kinda knew that myself, but I wasn’t gonna let it ruin a good true story!
Don’t want to be nosy, but is “Yard Dart” your real name?
Thanks for writing,
Ralph Hood
Part 77 - Objects Affecting Navigable Airspace; the only elevation that matters is the runway elevation. The runway is the starting point of the 100, 50, or 25 horizontal feet to vertical foot with regard to airspace. Your watertower, even if the base around it is raised, will remain the same horizontal distance from a runway and the elevation to the beacon on top of your watertower didn’t change. This means the water tower cannot be lowered by raising the base elevation as all you are doing is reducing the altitude from the base elevation to the top of the beacon. The runway either needs to be moved back farther, the runway raised, the tower lowered, or approach minimums raised and/or a dislocated threshold established. Sure, if an object is over 200′ tall (tower base to tower top ie: height) then a form 7460 needs to be filed with the FAA but I don’t think that was the intention of your example as the 7460 is just a submission to the FAA for study.
I’m not trying to be smug but some rules such as airspacing are not meant to be bent. In fact our system would be better off with more zoning to prevent inadvertant punctures into our airspace that reduce our minimums and runway lengths. Remember, the FAA doesn’t have the authority to prevent buildings, structures, towers, etc from being built, that authroity is with local & state government.