Lobby for Airport Radar

Thanks! Due to your efforts combined with Dan Bitton's, Waukegan and other small airports will be getting radar access.

Bob's partner, Dan Bitton, had been on-air with Spike discussing the need to install radar at small airports. He wanted to get 500,000 letters of support to install radar at Waukegan, Decatur, and Southern Illinois University airports to take to Washington and make a statement. Below is the Chicago Tribune story detailing the results.

RADAR COMING TO WAUKEGAN AS FAA YIELDS
COLLINS CRASH PUT PRESSURE ON AGENCY

By Rogers Worthington, Tribune Staff Writer.
Tribune staff writers Bradley Keoun and Margaret O'Brien contributed to this report.

Under pressure from the state's congressional delegation, the Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday reversed its previous opposition to installing radar at Waukegan Regional Airport, near where three people, including WGN radio personality Bob Collins, died in a midair collision last month. The radar that Waukegan will get is a relatively low-cost system--about $40,000--that has been around for years but has not been made widely available to small general-aviation airports like Waukegan, largely because the FAA has had a huge stake in pushing for a more sophisticated, far more expensive digital system.

"The rapid response of the FAA to our demand for action is a fitting tribute to those who lost their lives in the tragic accident in February," said Daniel Bitton, a co-owner of Collins' plane, who has been calling for radar at Waukegan ever since the accident. "While it will not bring them back to us, having (radar) installed will enable us to save lives in the future."

Political pressure for installing radar at the airport began to build shortly after the accident, when Bitton volunteered to pay for the low-cost radar system, called TARDIS, for Terminal Automated Radar Display and Information System. When the FAA told him the airport was not qualified to receive radar, he took his case to state Sen. Adeline Geo-Karis (R-Ill.), Gov. George Ryan and members of the state's congressional delegation. Bitton even enlisted the support of former Bulls star Michael Jordan, who often flies in and out of Waukegan.

"I think a lot of people have become energized on this issue," said Sam Skinner, a former U.S transportation secretary who practices law in Chicago and flies out of Waukegan.

It is not yet known whether lack of radar at Waukegan was at fault in the Feb. 8 midair collision over nearby Zion, in which Collins, 57; his passenger, retired Navy pilot Herman Luscher, 59; and student pilot Sharon Hock, 31; were killed while on approach to the airport. But investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board are exploring whether the availability of radar would have made a difference. FAA Great Lakes region spokesman Tony Molinaro said Thursday that the agency's decision to install TARDIS had nothing to do with the NTSB investigation.

"This wasn't a consequence of the accident," Molinaro said. "The quantity and complexity of operations at (Waukegan) still don't meet federal standards (for radar installation). But after some recent studies by the FAA, it was determined that TARDIS may help controllers at Waukegan."

The FAA uses a complicated system to determine which airports qualify for radar, and has made exceptions to allow TARDIS to be installed, mainly in cases where political pressure has been applied. Within the FAA bureaucracy in Washington, the issue of a low-cost radar system for smaller airports has been tangled in the agency's desire to outsource production of its equipment, and its ongoing struggle to modernize its air traffic control equipment with state-of-the-art systems rather than lower-tech adaptations. TARDIS was developed in 1993 by an FAA engineer using off-the-shelf parts, a software program of his own design, and a standard desktop computer. Michael Risley designed TARDIS to provide an extra margin of safety at small, radarless airports in the Kansas City area.

"This piece of equipment has saved a lot of lives at this airport," said Patrick Callagy, an air traffic controller at Johnson County Executive Airport in Olathe, Kan., one of the first to get Risley's creation. He likens TARDIS to having "electronic binoculars." But the FAA has never certified TARDIS for use in separating and directing air traffic, and urges air traffic controllers to use the system only as an extension of their binoculars, a backup to verify what their eyes see.

The $1 billion system into which the FAA has put all its hopes is known as STARS, or Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System. But STARS, which has been plagued by schedule delays and cost increases, is not expected to be installed systemwide until 2005 at the earliest. The FAA also has exhausted its replacement supply for the existing radar remote display system, called DBRITE (Digital Bright Radar Indicator Tower Equipment). The TARDIS system would seem to have come along at the right time and the right price. Yet instead of being embraced by the FAA, which would have meant certifying the system's performance and reliability and developing requirements and support-maintenance services for its use, TARDIS instead became a point of internal debate and frustration.

"We say, `Well, here is a system that will solve some problems,' and headquarters (in Washington, D.C.) turns around and says, `No, no. We don't want it competing with STARS,' " said Scott Lueckert, an FAA associate program manager and steward for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association in Kansas City.

TARDIS isn't perfect: It does not provide complete flight identification of an aircraft, or an alert when two planes get too close. But it does give air traffic controllers a picture of where an aircraft is and an indication of its altitude and whether that aircraft is on a collision course with another aircraft.

"This is a poor man's STARS," said Alan Deutermann, vice president at Delta Information Systems in Horsham, Pa., an FAA contractor.

FAA officials have set a four-month deadline for installing TARDIS at Waukegan's control tower, but Risley hopes to install the system in May.

"The skies above Waukegan Airport have been made safer," said Michael K. Demetrio, a lawyer for Hock's family members, who have filed a wrongful death suit accusing the private contractor that directs air traffic at Waukegan of failing to place radar in the tower.

© CHICAGO TRIBUNE