University Daily Kansan
Tuesday, April 29, 1980
9
High anxiety a part of air traffic controller's job
Staff Reporter
By JEFF KIOUS
As the Boeing 727 jettlin lifted off from our one another ambert Field a call came from the port you've got an unidentified aircraft coming out of the southwest between 10,000 and 14,000 miles.
Immediately, the flight engineer jumped from his seat and began searching the sky for the aircraft. The captain peered out of his window. The copilot stood up from his seat.
"St. Louis, I don't see anything, but we'll keep looking," the captain said.
A few moments later the control tower replied: "TWA 855, that unidentified aircraft has passed you. You're clear to climb and be freed (feet) and to contact Kansas City Center."
Stripping himself back into his seat, the flight engineer for the Kansas City-bound f45 explained that departure control handled all air traffic in the St. Louis area within a 10,600-foot range with 9,000 feet of the radar control center in Olathe.
"Departure control kept us until 12,000 because of the traffic in the area," he said.
THE FLIGHT engineer said the aircraft had been flown with instrument flight rules. If the pilot had been flying the instrument flight rules, the center could have picked it up and given flight 483 its instructions.
In an effort to keep aircraft off collision courses, air traffic controllers must monitor not only attitude and direction of a flight, but also separate aircraft on the screen.
The Olathe traffic controllers monitor a nine-state area, including Kansas and Missouri. Kansas City Center is one of 20 cities in the state to host IHAN. It handles about 5,000 flights each day.
The center's indur had been tracking
light 485 since takeoff because the jetliner
was running at a high speed, which called
a transponder, which allowed it to
transmit a unique computer code to the
aircraft.
In addition to the transponder information, the Kansas City Center controllers also receive printed information about each aircraft in their sector. These "strips," as they are called, are printed 10 feet apart and beaked by one of the center's computer monitors.
This computer assembles all flight information that has been filed by airlines and examines the data for potential conflict with other proposed traffic.
"You know the pressure's coming when the strips are plunging up, said Sharon Childers. You should not be up because you don't know how hard the traffic will be when it comes. One day it will be perfect, everything will fit in." The next day it will be completely different."
Another ATC, John Adams, said that sometimes the job was slow, simple and
boring, but that eventually the workload was certain to pick up.
"When I see the strips pile up my blood pressure goes up," he said. "Then it's hard to wind down with such a peak work load."
IN ADDITION to the strips, controllers follow radar blips on a vertical screen. This radar data comes from the aircraft's radar system. The radar data is sent to the screen by the center's second computer.
Controllers at the center use this information to monitor all IFR aircraft in an area between Denver and Chicago and between Minneapolis and Dallas.
In addition to their sectors, controllers are responsible for keeping an aircraft within the control area. These controllers are responsible for all traffic up to 23,000 feet High altitude controllers are
CONTROLLERS Look up for altitude conflicts between aircraft. Up to 29,000 feet there must be a 1,000 foot vertical separation between aircraft and five miles separation laterally. About 29,000 feet there must be a 500-foot vertical separation and more than five miles separation laterally.
"We are busier than high altitude controllers because of the density of traffic in and around airports," Adams, a low altitude controller, said.
When an aircraft's route takes it from one sector to another and hence, from one controller's sector to another, a data block will flash on the screen of the new sector
A similar procedure was followed when the 482 data entered into Kauai City. A high frequency antenna of 482 data block to a low altitude controller on it turned hurt off to appropriate control system.
until the controller accepts responsibility. The data block contains all the flight information.
If there had been any congestion problems in the area, the center would have delayed handing a plane over, directing it into a holding pattern.
CONFLICT AND TRAffic congestion problems arise, according to controllers, when IFR aircraft descend or ascend through airspace which has VFR aircraft. FVR aircraft are on visual flying patterns and are not required to talk to the center or
"If a conflict occurred, we could give the FIrPilot a course around the VFR aircraft if he requested it," Adams said.
Controllers said that this type of uncertainty about the location of aircraft within their sectors caused job tension.
Because of this stress and tension, a second career program for ATC's was set up in 1972, according to Gary Eads, regional traffic controller (TRAffic Traffic Controllers Organization) (PATC).
Eads said the program was set up for controllers who, for medical reasons or retirement, should not be working the day shift. The department was cut off in 1878 because of
mismanagement by the Federal Aviation Administration.
THE FAA said that the funding for the program was cut off by 47 percent, and the FAA is under budgetary reasons, according to Joe Noman, chief of union management relations for the FAA in New York.
A modified version of the program is pending in a rules committee before the House of Representatives, Eads said.
The program provided a two-year training program for controllers who had been disqualified many of them were disqualified for various reasons including unsuitable training, so Congress did not appropriate more money. The program was not meeting its objectives.
Another disagreement between PATCO and the FAA concerns an immunity program established by the FA4 for controllers about five years ago. Before July 1979, a controller could make one mistake such as standard separation error and, if he were to would go unpunished. A controller will be punished for every mistake.
EADS SAID that last year's ruling by the FAA was illegal. There was a provision in the agreement that stated the immunity would not be changed or eliminated.
But the FAA terminated the original agreement because of an increase in mistakes, Nonan said, and because a "great many mistakes go unreported."
Women's education said to aid social change
Rv BRIAN VON BEVERN
Staff Reporter
Women can use higher education as a valuable tool for social change, according to the executive director of the Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault.
Margaret Jordan, also a former mayor of Leawood, was the featured speaker at the Women's Recognition Program, an annual Women's Recognition Program. The program was co-organized by the University of Missouri.
Jordan said part of the problem with creating social change was that people didn't know how they wanted society changed.
THE SOCIAL change her group proposes is to let every person realize their potential.
"There is not even agreement on what direction social change should take," she said.
That is why I have a great quarrel with
the present state of higher education," she said.
She said the system used in law schools favored students who went straight through four years of undergraduate study and then law school without experiencing the "real world," not ever learning to put their studies into perspective. She also said some police in the real world could use a year in the law school to help them understand how the law works.
I think what we're beginning to realize is that if we have change, the best informed people in the world should make the decisions.
"When you consider at least one-fourth of our freshman class of legislators are contemplating not running again, obviously we must change our view of decision making."
"Education is the vehicle through which we allow the best of all this to happen to our people."
JORDAN SAID she was pleased with the
amount of career information available to students at KU, but worried that even the best education left gaps in the knowledge a student needs.
Comparing a college graduate to a popper, she said, "We all know a popover is hollow inside. You're going to need something else filled in your head."
But she emphasized the need for women to attend college.
"It is an important idea that the women of KU get the same start off the launchpad as the men, so that in 29 years they can take their own footsteps," state governmentaries are run," Jordan said.
Jordan, elected 10 years ago as the first woman mayor in Kuwait since the turn of the century, is now serving on a women serving in elected governmental positions at the city level in Kuwait at a younger age.
That is the highest average of women officials of any state in the nation, she said.
She said it all stems back to the value of a college education.
"Celebrate what you can get out of college now and in the future," she said. "It will do more than anything else to change your life."
In another part of the program, five new members were inducted into the KU Women's Hall of Fame last night.
ALEXANDRA MASON, director of the rare books collection of the Spencer Institute for Learning, and the KPU perceptual motor clinic for children with motor dysfunction; Evelyn DeGraw, professor of design at George Gale SSI, McCoy, director of the Adult life Resource Center, joined 40 other women honored as outstanding women representatives in the field.
Also recognized at the program were:
JANET LINDSTRUM, Des Moines, Iowa, junior, outstanding woman student athlete; Nancy Mims, Wichita senior, outstanding
Climate predictions hazy at best
The climes, they are a-changing
Staff Reporter they are no change
The lives, they are all coming
Ten years ago, much of the scientific community believed that the earth was heading into the throes of another ice age.
Some scientists believe man's pollutants are causing a heating effect and some theorize that the earth is cooling off.
By DON MUNDAY Staff Reporter
Not today's scientists are divided. Some say the earth is getting warmer, and some says it's getting cooler. Still others say there isn't enough evidence to tell for sure.
THE REAL AIM is a fear that pollution may be changing the climate, and the Senate is pushing for a new law to hearings this month to find out if increased burning of coal—an alternative to impending climate change—is harmful.
Whatever the climate is doing, it is important enough to have caused Congress to measure the climate change and keep watch over the world, according to Diane Johnson of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder. A study of recent weather events involved in the study of the changing climate.
One proposition of the theory that the earth is getting warmer is NCAEM meteorologist Philippe Dupont. The annual harvest in the burning of fossil fuels this century would finally take its toll by the year.
student in women's rights/women's awareness; Michel Senile, Lawrence sophomore, outstanding woman in student services; Special student, special student, for community services; Molly Lim, Singapore senior, outstanding international woman student service; Jillian Burke, outstanding woman student in politics; Prea Briggs, Milford graduate student, outstanding woman student in architecture; administrative to the dean of the School of Architecture, outstanding woman staff member; and Irene Wherrell, assistant teacher; and Portuguese, outstanding woman teacher.
"My prediction, and that of many others, is that by the end of this century, it will be
This could mean increased worldwide food production, but at the earth's poles the changes could be detrimental.
Kellogg said such a temperature increase would melt the polar ice cemps enough to raise the sea level 20 feet by the year 2030.
Kellogg also said that with such a warmer trend vegetation zones might shift northward, and changed precipitation patterns, to turn former basketswiches into deserts.
Although a rise of three degrees in world temperatures does not seem like much, many scientists feel it could have drastic effects upon the earth.
warming to the point where the earth will be the warmest it is been in the last thousand years or so- and still heating up. "Kellogg said,
"Every one degree of extra warmth averages out to 10 extra days in the growing season," Kellogg said.
GEORGE WOODWELL, director of the Ecosystem Center at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, who testified
BY THE MIDE of the 21st century, he said, the average world temperature may have risen by 2 or 3 degrees centigrade, through a process known as the greenhouse effect. According to that theory, increased amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would let the same amount of heat be released into space, allowing less heat to radiate back into space.
secure one senate committee earlier this month, said a warming trend could mean bad news for midwestern agriculture.
"Even a migration of the agricultural zones by 200 miles northward could be disruptive." Woodwell said.
None of these theories have been tested against reality. "Bryson said, 'They're just theories. My research has indicated that there is a much smaller than is assumed by some.'"
Ryerson said his theory had helped explain a significant drop in the temperatures in the upper midwest over the last several years. That finding suggests that Minnesota indicates a relatively high dust
But Reid Bryson, director of the Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, questioned the assumptions used in the greenhouse effect theory.
Bryson said that in the last 35 years, there has been an increase in volcanic activity around the world. In World War II, Overall, he said, there have been more than 1,100 volcano eruptions.
BRYSON THEORIZED that fluctuations in climate may be caused by varying amounts of volcanic dust in the atmosphere.
"Volcanic eruptions mean a thin layer of volcanic smoke or debris is put in the atmosphere over the earth, "he said.
Sunlight does not penetrate this dust layer as well as through clear air, meaning cooler temperatures beneath the dust.
Police said the car-related charges stemmed from Patterson's allegedly stealing a car from the 700 block of Vermont earlier in the evening. The car was owned by Anita Williams, 26, and was valued at $35,000. It recovered the vehicle, a 1927 Volkswagen.
once arrested the man captured by Pinet, Richard Patterson, and charged him with obstruction of the legal process, or attempted auto theft and attempted theft from auto.
The professor, Frank Pinet, 59, told police that he and his wife heard a noise in their house at 704 W. 12th St. at 1 a.m. when he investigated, he said, he found a man inside the house.
Patterson, who gave police a number of aliases in the process of booking, was in Douglas County jail yesterday with bond set at $19,000.
KANSAN Police Beat
content in the air that the time of the volcanic eruption that created the Crater Lake in Oregon some 5,600 years ago. A period of cooling follow the eruption, he said.
MAROTZ ALSO said that predicting a change in climate was unsure at best.
If the world's climate is indeed dependent upon one's activity be said, then said activity can take on a warmer or cooler in the future would be impossible because there is no way to predict how it will.
Some say climate may one day be determined by natural cycles of glacial periods.
A KU professor of business detained a 19-year-old man who had allegedly broken into his house until police could arrest him Saturday night.
"We can't even make the weather forecasts more than three days in advance," he said. "And ever then they are accurate." But how can we predict accurately?"
"At this time, the earth is in an interglacial period," Johnson said. "We know it's been cold before and history shows periods of warmth in between it. We know that it will return to an ice age. We're not sure we're heading into the ice age or away from it."
Despite the enactment of the more stringent policy last year, Noonan said, "I can't recall being fired over an incident."
Noonan said that the FAA had no control over salaries because they were set by Congress. He also said that the 40-hour work standard is among all government agencies.
EADS SAID that controllers should work a 34-hour work week and that controllers' working hours would make U. controllers' working conditions similar to controllers in countries such as Canada and the United States.
Eads said also that PATCO was interested in salary increases and a shorter work week for employees who worked in the classified between Government Status 10 to GS 14. Many of the controllers are GS 14 and up.
"We have just as great a responsibility as a pilot," a Jirds said, "so our salaries should be competitive with thirs. Some of those 741 pilots make over $100,000 a year."
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The Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity, Chi Omega Sorority and the March of Dimes would like to thank the following merchants for their prizes and efforts making this year's dance marathon one of the most successful.
Nelson's Team Electronics
Clothes Encounter
McCall's Shoes
Britches Corner
Angler's Unlimited
Horizon's Honda
Nabil's Restaurant
Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream
Horizon's Prea Mr. Guy Cassem's Clothing Eldridge House Gilbert/Robinson, Inc. Tantalize Hardee's Restaurant KLZR Radio JB's Big Boy
The Jay Shoppe
Thanks for all your help!