Col. Chris Nowland no longer is wing commander at Vance Air Force Base, but he left behind a colorful phrase to describe the transition under way at Vance’s Radar Approach Control center.
“We’re going from a Pinto to a Ferrari while driving 80 miles an hour down the freeway,” was the way Nowland put it.
The project has been in the planning stages for a decade. Three years ago a site survey was held for the Digital Airport Surveillance Radar, installation of which was completed earlier this year.
Now technicians are working to install the new Standard Terminal Automation Replacement system, which will replace 1960s-style radar screens with state-of-the-art, high definition color monitors. The STARS system is scheduled to be installed by Aug. 12, but won’t be in full use until February.
Throughout the transition (and a $1.7 million renovation of their building) the men and women of Vance’s RAPCON have continued to safely direct aircraft flying over northwest Oklahoma. Vance’s RAPCON is tasked with controlling all aircraft, whether military or civilian, in airspace stretching from Kingfisher to Anthony, Kan., and from I-35 to Gage, up to 24,000 feet.
Hence Nowland’s colorful, but apt, analogy.
The new system, with a total project cost of around $14 million, will replace outdated technology in use at Vance since the early 1980s.
“Essentially what we are doing here is just like they did with the TV upgrades from analog to digital,” said Capt. Josh Leete, airfield operations flight commander at Vance.
The new system will present controllers with information in a more readable, more user-friendly form.
“It’s a significant improvement in presentation of radar data,” said John Cefali, Vance’s National Airspace System installation project lead. “It provides more accurate data, it increases the amount of data that can be displayed. Whenever you can do that you improve your safety margin.”
With the STARS system, controllers not only are presented an array of information about the aircraft they are handling (such as type of aircraft, altitude, heading and speed), but also up-to-the-second weather information — vital in a part of the country often noted for its wild weather.
“STARS-DASR has the capability of giving us accurate weather radar on our screens, whereas the old system didn’t,” said Jim Murray, chief of air traffic control automation at Vance.
“It has the capability of displaying up to six different levels of weather,” Cefali said. “It’s a major leap forward in what controllers can see on the glass.”
“You can be proactive instead of reactive,” Leete said. “Right now until the pilot tells you about it (weather) you’re none the wiser. You’ve got to be able to react quickly because there’s no pause button in air traffic control.”
The current system is not a certified weather radar, while the new one is, Leete said.
The old radar scopes, with their round, burnt-orange screens, look like something out of a Cold War-era movie. Controllers had to work in nearly full darkness in order to get the best view of the old screens — hence RAPCON’s nickname, “the dungeon.” The new screens can be operated in normal office lighting.
“No more fumbling around in the dark,” Murray said.
The new screens also can be adjusted so the aircraft being handled by a certain controller all will be displayed in one color, making them easier to identify.
The new system also features four levels of backup. If one goes out, the other will kick in immediately, resulting in no interruption in Vance’s air traffic control operation.
“The only way Vance approach control could be knocked off the air would be a catastrophic occurrence,” Murray said.
The new STARS system also helps extend the reach of Vance’s RAPCON radar. The system is being tied into radar located near Putnam, 13 miles south of Taloga in Dewey County. That will help eliminate a void in Vance’s current radar coverage.
“There’s a 30-mile gap of radar coverage where it gets real iffy there, and it’s a very busy training area,” Murray said. “With the new equipment we’ll be able to see that now.”
The Putnam radar also gives Vance another backup system, Murray said.
“If a lightning strike takes out the antenna at midfield here at Vance, we can still use that Putnam feed to keep operations going,” he said.
Vance’s air traffic controllers will begin training in late August on the new system, a process Leete likened to transitioning from flying a World War II P-51 Mustang to a modern F-22 Raptor fighter.
“How to fly the airplane remains the same, but the systems, the data and the information you get and the capabilities are that big of a generation jump,” he said.
New controllers coming out of technical school at Keesler AFB, Miss., already are trained on the STARS system.
“Us old-timers are the ones that are going to have to learn from our kids,” Murray said.
Vance will be the 24th Air Force Base to receive the STARS system, out of an eventual total of 45. Identical technology is being used at some 50 airports throughout the country, as well as at regional control centers.
“It provides seamless coverage from takeoff at one airport to landing at another,” Cefali said.
The STARS system also will help filter out extraneous information. Spinning power-generating wind turbines will show up on the old system as a phantom airplane, not so with the new system.
“The new system will have the ability to filter out that stuff significantly,” Leete said. “What you see is, no kidding, what you get. It’s there.”