Innovators tackle desert dust and pigeon poop

$30,000 awarded to top three teams in Air Force Enterprize Challenge

Local innovators earned $30,000 in prize money this week after offering the U.S. Air Force at Kirtland Air Force Base some novel ideas to protect aircraft against desert dust, chase flocks of nesting pigeons from hangars, and efficiently manage student flight training schedules.

The Air Force Research Laboratory’s Technology Engagement Office asked local entrepreneurs to help Kirtland solve those issues through a new Enterprize Challenge launched in July. The competition culminated Wednesday night in a grand finale at Innovate ABQ’s Lobo Rainforest building Downtown, where the AFRL awarded $30,000 in cash prizes to the top three innovation teams.

Albuquerque-based chemical engineering firm Anox Consulting took first-place with $15,000 for proposing thin film coatings that could naturally repel sand and dust from sticking to CV-22 tilt-rotor aircraft, which Kirtland frequently flies in the New Mexico desert to take advantage of Middle East-like terrain here. The dust clouds cause major damage to the craft.

The second-place, $10,000 award went to two local entrepreneurs, Mike Voorhees and Eric Mechenbier of Mechenbier IT, who teamed up to create an automated online scheduling system to coordinate Kirtland’s virtually nonstop day and night student training flights.

New startup company Dataless Technology Group (DTG) won third place with $5,000 for its “mechanized avian disruption system,” or MADS, which proposes a network of continuously-rotating car wash brushes that would be strung along rails attached to hangar ceilings to scare pigeons away. The pigeons have created a “poop problem” in the hangars.

Air Force officers had specifically requested assistance with those problems and others.

“We’ve never done anything like this before, here or across the Air Force,” said AFRL Technology Engagement Office Director Matt Fetrow at the award ceremony. “It’s a new way to tap innovation in the local community to help the Air Force solve problems.”

Innovators and entrepreneurs

GREG SORBER/JOURNAL Maintenance crews work on CV-22 Osprey in a hanger at Kirtland Air Force Base. After missions where landings generate clouds of dust the engines have to be washed down.

GREG SORBER/JOURNAL A CV-22 Osprey with the 58th Special Operations Wing from Kirtland Air Force Base lands at a training area on a mesa southwest of the base in this 2015 file photo. A local Air Force business challenge may have figured out a way to keep dust and dirt from causing major problems for the aircraft.

KEVIN ROBINSON-AVILA/JOURNAL From left, Sandia Preparatory School students Addy Combs, Anja Stefanovic, Saxon Proffitt and Sasha Hanson present their pigeon-control proposal at the Enterprize Challenge finale Wednesday night.

KEVIN ROBINSON-AVILA/JOURNAL Matthew Ayoub, left, and Elan Colello won third place in the Enterprize Chalenge for their proposal to scare pigeons out of Air Force hangars with rotating car wash brushes, shown here.