Airport weather station
By PAT MURPHY
Express Staff Writer
Not everything in aviation moves fast in the jet age.
Friedman Memorial Airport moved closer this week to installation of an automated weather observing system (AWOS) that will broadcast current weather conditions in the airport area to pilots.
The low bidder at $107,151 for the installation was CLH, of Minneapolis, which has installed 140 of the airport AWOS stations and provides updated broadcasts.
But Friedman manager Rick Baird told members of the airport authority Tuesday night that it probably would be a year before a VHF frequency is obtained from the Federal Communi-cations Commission for the AWOS station.
Baird also hopes to add an auto-mated terminal information service (ATIS) to the AWOS frequency to provide pilots with voice information on airport runway conditions, perti-nent radio frequencies, data about obstacles or construction, special instructions. ATIS relieves airport control tower personnel from repeat-ing the same information to every inbound or outbound pilot.
Board member Dr. Ron Fairfax, a general aviation pilot and aircraft owner, said from a pilot?s vantage the AWOS station should also include information about approaching thun-derstorms.
But Baird said AWOS broadcasts only contain information about weather overhead at the airport. The ATIS, he said, could include such information.
Friedman?s addition of new tech-nology has been slow, but of no fault of the field. The new transponder landing system (TLS) that will allow aircraft to operate in marginal weather conditions is installed, but not yet tested and fully approved by the Federal Aviation Administration.
An optimistic Baird still hopes the TLS will be operational for this winter, when the two airlines serving the Wood River Valley, Skywest and Horizon, encounter deteriorating weather that requires cancellation of flights or diverting to other airports.
The TLS, a less expensive cousin to the instrument landing system (ILS) at larger airports, enables pilots to activate basic navigational instruments in their cockpits by tuning to a code on their transponder assigned by the Friedman control tower prior to landing.
The transponder is a device with numerical digits that otherwise broadcasts a signal that can be detected on radar and allow controllers to keep en route aircraft separated.
