By Jeff Mullin, Senior Writer
May 11, 2008 12:04 am
—
Some people are said to have the world on a string, while some set the world on fire.
But Tom Harris, in effect, turned the world four degrees, to help Vance Air Force Base pilots more precisely navigate their way into and out of the base.
Harris, a terminal instrument proceduralist with Vance Air Force Base Radar Approach Control, was charged with implementing a four-degree magnetic variation change in the way Vance flies training missions.
“Did it move in reference to landmarks? No,” said Capt. Joshua Leete, airfield operations flight commander for the Vance RAPCON, “but the navigational aids which we navigate off of, changed. Essentially Tom picked up the world and turned it four degrees and put it back down.”
And, if that wasn’t enough, the changes were implemented over a weekend, after some 10 months of preliminary work, Leete said.
“The effort that goes into that is insane,” Leete said. “He has to completely redesign and re-certify every flying procedure that we use.”
For his efforts, Harris was recognized by Air Education and Training Command as terminal instrument proceduralist of the year.
Of course, Harris didn’t literally turn the world four degrees. In fact, he said, it actually was the other way around.
“It does that on its own,” Harris said. “What we had to do was catch up with our ground-based navigational aids and our radar.”
Navigational aids and radar, Harris explained, are set to the variation between the magnetic north pole and true north. That variation increases gradually every year, he said, so gradually, in fact, it had been 35 years since the last adjustment of Vance’s navigational aids.
Harris contacted the Fed-eral Aviation Administration for the next projected magnetic variation of record for 2010.
“Then we reevaluated all of our instrument procedures based on what the new one would be,” Harris said.
Harris then coordinated with all entities on base involved in the change, as well as AETC headquarters and the FAA and set Oct. 1 as the completion date.
“They came in on Friday and flew, and they came in on Monday and flew,” Leete said, “and everything was changed by four degrees. It was seamless, it just all happened. He (Harris) says it very calmly like it’s no big deal, but it was huge, what he did.”
Much of Harris’ job is to make sure Vance pilots get safely into and out of the base. He determines the best and safest routes for planes to enter and leave the base.
“Every procedure that a plane flies has to be protected, it has to be evaluated,” Leete said. “His job is to look out at the world and evaluate all the little antenna towers and all the trees, anything that could ever get in an airplane’s way.”
Harris is notified whenever a new cell tower or other structure is being built that could effect Vance’s normal takeoff and landing patterns.
He spent 21 years in the Air Force as an air traffic controller, then went to instrument procedure school 11 years ago. He has been at Vance since September 2003.
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