Weather system will enhance safety at Hall-Miller Airport
Atlanta’s Tevis Pappas is helping the town’s airport take a giant step toward safety and usefulness through his company, Pappas Technologies Inc.
Pappas’ company is installing an Automated Weather Observation System (AWOS) at the Hall-Miller Airport. Its cost is around $200,000, 75% of which is borne by a Texas Department of Transportation grant.
A weather observation system provides up-to-the-minute weather reports to pilots via radio, telephone and the internet. Such information can also be accessed by the public.
An AWOS system obtains critical data such as wind speed and direction, cloud height and visibility collected from airport locations which is transmitted to a central processing station located indoors. Automated reports are generated, but the system also allows manual editing for local messaging. Such messages can be accessed by the public by telephone, going online or radio data.
Pappas is using the technological company Mesotech of Sacramento, California, for the system equipment.
“I’ve worked with this company for three years,” he said. “For the last two years as a sales representative.”
Pappas said he is saving the city some $40,000 since his bid to construct the project was $146,000 compared with the next lowest of $186,000.
“I’m taking less because this is where I live and where I fly,” Pappas said, adding he is also lowering his costs on monthly maintenance and emergency service.
“Because of my background in technology, my customers are happy with my service,” he said. “No complaints. I’ll be there more quickly at half the cost. The others have an emergency service charge of $1,500 per day and I am $750. I’m also less on the regular service. While theirs is $600 per month, mine is half that.”
Such a system will last 10 to 20 years.
“This is important for our airport. We’re still a small town, but this will save someone’s life. It will let aircraft come in under bad conditions, for example, and since safety is No. 1, this will be an important advantage.
“We’ll have more traffic. The AWOS system can give required information for aircraft to come in and land at a ceiling of 200 rather than 600 feet. The pilot can pick up the AWOS and know exactly what the conditions are. That’s more traffic, more people landing, so our airport will grow and this will qualify us for more grants.
“Also, the airport will sell more fuel. If anything is unique to Atlanta, we can record a local message on the system. For example, the airport manager can say, ‘Don’t land. Fuel not available.’ That’s a bonus.”
To further explain the technology of an Automated Weather Observation System, Tevis Pappas describes some of the system’s components.
One white box contains a thunder storm detector. This detector picks up lightning flashes from up to 200 miles away and will announce when and where the storm fronts are.
Another box on the pole is called a ceilometer and is a device for measuring and recording the height of clouds.
“This device shoots a laser beam that bounces off clouds letting you know height of up to three cloud layers, which are scattered, broken and overcast.
“We can fly normally using VFR (visual flight rules) and be saying clouds are scattered at 15,000 feet, but if it gets bad and let’s say the ceiling drops to 400 feet, you cannot take off without instruments and you can’t land unless you know the ceiling is greater than 200 feet.”
With this system in an emergency, Pappas said rescue aircraft could land with a 200 foot ceiling.
“Otherwise you’d have to go to Texarkana. That could be life saving.”
Still another box contains the computer sensors which are reporting to the central computer. A rain gauge bucket is also present and very precise, measuring to a hundredth of an inch. It tells of rain for the last hour or last 24 hours.
“Visibility is another signal information that is necessary. This box looks at what is out there, such as air, smoke or fog and determines how far you can see. You have to have 3-mile visibility to land under Visual Flight Rules.
“If you didn’t have this information, you might not be able to come in and pick up an injured person. But if the pilot knows the visibility, he can drop down and look, maybe seeing the airport building over there or another object over here.
“Then, he’ll also have the wind speed and direction measured ultrasonically, not with mechanical paddle and wheel. These are electronics, two transmitters and two receivers which are pointed at each other and sending signals. With fancy calculation of the resultant component using the Doppler effect, the wind strength and direction is measured. Within one degree it tells where the wind is coming from and how strong and that tells the pilot which runway to use.”
Pappas is also having the construction site done. Where to place the station in relation to airport runways is critical. The area must be cleared with trees no closer than 500 feet.
“I paid $7,000 to have all this cleared and the concrete pad placed.The city is providing a road and a 30x50 8-foot fence all around the equipment. We’ve also had to get rid of hogs and deer. It’s all part of the grant money. We have up to $200,000 but won’t spend all of it,” he concluded.