A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/613905
being used for hobby or recreational purposes, " when flown within 5 miles of an airport, the operator of the aircraf t provides the airport operator and the airport air traffic control tower (when an air traffic facility is located at the airport) with prior notice of the operation. " This requirement has created a difficult compliance situation for the agency. Neither NA TCA nor the ATO are in favor of phone calls to our air traffic facilities, which makes the notification piece difficult. Mr. Weidner and James Keith (NATCA Article 48 Rep, AJV7) have been representing NATCA on various agency effort s to address this requir ement. AJV7 has been leading this effort and is attempting to define a short term, mid term and long - term solution to comply with this requirement. No consensus has been reache d, but progress is being made. The goal is to have a short - term solution in plac e in the next few weeks. ANG UAS Operations at Civilian Airports The Air National Guard (ANG) is proposing to fly their Predators (MQ1) and Reapers (MQ9) from t he FAR and SYR airports. Mr. Weidner and Mr. Stephenson have been working with the facreps and UAS representatives at each of these facilities on these requests. The ANG has already completed taxi testing at SYR and were slowly moving toward airborne/p attern flight testing. Approval for the airborne operation, however, has been held up due to s pect rum issues within the FAA. Additionally, the ANG at SYR has slipped their estimate for airborne operations to summer/fall 2016 due to the logistics of the installation of their LSTAR radar. The ND ANG is moving closer to testin g their taxi operation at FA R. Their next step will be to work out procedures for airborne/pattern testing. The FAR airborne operation is also being held up by the spectrum issue wit hin the agency. The proposed FAR operation also needs to answer the question of how the ANG will comp ly with FAR 91.113 between the FAR airport and the military oper ating area to the west of FAR. The ANG currently flies out of GFK and uses a TFR to tra nsit between GFK and the MOA. Mr. Weidner and Mr. Stephenson attended a briefing at the FAR airport given by the ANG earlier this year. The ANG explained that they would not be using a TFR between FAR and the MOA, nor would they be flying with a chase plane. When asked how they planned to comply with 91.113 between FAR and the MOA, t he ANG did not have an ans wer. The current thinking is that the ANG will rely on Ground Based Sense and Avoid (GBSAA ) radar to comply with 91.113. However, that radar system does not yet exist in North Dakota. VOR MINIMUM OPERATING NETWORK (MON): John Vogelsang (P31) is the VOR M ON Article 48 Representative. His report is below. ยท The project is attempting to move forward with 7 VORs scheduled for discontinuance in 2016. They are: o PLB o PNN o AOH o BUA o EDS o SYO