UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday, August 19, 1996
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Faulty weather system reports snow in June
Critics oppose installation of $100,000 units
The Associated Press
LUBBOCK, Texas — Federal auditors criticize it, air traffic controllers condemn it and even the Federal Aviation Administration admits there are flaws in its Automated Surface Observing System.
公司名称：北京京银金融信息有限公司
法定代表人：李文国
法定代表人：刘晓峰
股东单位：北京京银金融信息有限公司
其他单位：北京市朝阳区广发证券投资基金管理有限公司
法定代表人：吴晓慧
法定代表人：李文国
法定代表人：刘晓峰
股东单位：北京京银金融信息有限公司
其他单位：北京市朝阳区广发证券投资基金管理有限公司
1. The unmanned weather monitor
2. lst stations have reported snow in
the summer and poor visibility on clear days. The stations also have missed thunderstorms.
Nevertheless, the FAA continues to install the equipment at airports nationwide.
"It doesn't work," said Ben Phelps, spokesman for the National Parks
Air Traffic Controllers Association.
"I'll tell you point-blank: I think it's a gigantic waste of money, and I'm concerned someday someone might get hurt."
Under pressure from the Clinton administration to streamline, the FAA and the National
Weather service must to install the $100,000 units as replacements for costly human weather observers. More than 900 units should be in place by 1999.
The system measures wind speed and direction, temperature, humidity, visibility, cloud height and precipitation. A computer processes the data and radios it to pilots, using an electronic voice. It also sends the readings to the nearest air traffic control station.
"The basic elements that a pilot needs for takeoff and landing are there," said the system's program manager, Vicki Nadolski. "They might have been used to getting something more than that, and of course they don't want to lose that."
But FAA officials said the system could not accurately identify thunderstorms, freezing precipitation, lightning and virga — rain that evaporates before reaching the ground.
An April 1995 audit by the General Accounting Office, the investigative
arm of Congress, found that the system, ASQS, was notorious for underestimating potentially hazardous weather.
"ASOS is performing neither as intended or expected," the office concluded. "While many specified
Floyd Gilliland, a weather observer in the Texas Panhandle's southeastern corner until the FAA revoked his contract last month.
requirements are being met, the system does not provide certain information that human observers do and users say is important to aviation safety, weather-related decision making and climatological analysis."
said he had noticed several problems with the system at Childress, Texas. Among them were total shutdowns when lightning struck nearby and a report of snowfall on a balmy June day.
Nadolski said human error often
was to blame for abnormal readings.
A search of NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System, initiated by The Associated Press, shows aviation professionals have reported anonymously more than 150 complaints about the system and related systems, many of them since the office's audit.
A pilot flying into Richmond, Va., in December wrote that the system was worse than useless because it misread the altitude of cloud cover, forcing him to miss an approach.
A Denver controller said in June that the system reported quarter-mile visibility for two hours when visibility actually was better than a mile.
Among the remarks:
The system's Operations and Monitoring Center in Silver Spring, Md., had a kinder assessment of the system's performance in an April 1996 report.
"ASOS itself performs very well;
some of the sensors have been problematic but those are being improved," wrote Richard K. Thigpen of the National Weather Service.
The controllers' union has called for the abandonment of the system, citing an incident in Houston 2 1/2 months ago.
Residents tuned to television and radio stations on June 2 were more aware of a violent thunderstorm than were controllers at Houston Intercontinental Airport, who said the system told them the weather was stable.
The system has a mixed reputation in the general aviation community, which generally uses airfields without towers or conventional weather monitoring.
Military plane crashes in Wyoming
"It's tough to badmouth the system when the pilots are getting something extremely valuable at so many more locations," said Drew Steketee, spokesman for the Frederick, Md.-based Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.
Eight crew members secret service agent dead after presidential vacation
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — A military plane providing support for President Clinton slammed into a steep mountainside just after taking off late Aug. 17 from Jackson, Wyo., where the president had been vacationing. Rescue workers found no sign of survivors.
One Secret Service employee and eight crew members were believed to have been aboard the plane, which burst into a fireball in rocky, remote terrain in the Grand Teton range, White House spokeswoman April Mellody said yesterday morning. And Lt. Cmdr. Karen Jeffries, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said the Air Force had confirmed that eight of its personnel were listed on the manifest as being on the flight.
A National Park Service spokeswoman,
Roberta D'Amico, said rescue workers on foot
and horseback arrived at the crash site about 4:30 a.m. yesterday and found wreckage still smoldering but no survivors.
Clinton, who had left the area by helicopter more than five hours earlier, returned safely to the White House yesterday morning after a nine-day vacation. He was notified of the crash early yesterday by Evelyn Lieberman, deputy chief of staff.
A Clinton administration official said the pilot had reported mechanical difficulties and had started to return to the airport, but others cautioned against speculating on why the plane went down.
At the Pentagon, Jeffries said early yesterday that the Air Force was dispatching specialists for the search and rescue mission from Hill Air Force Base in Utah.
Heintz said the plane was en route to John F.
Arnette Heintz, a spokesman for the Secret Service, said the Secret Service employee on the plane was a physical securities technician who was part of the broad presidential protective team. Heintz said foul play was not considered a factor.
Kennedy Airpo rt in New York and carried equipment used, in support of the president's travel. Clinton was scheduled to fly to New York later veste davi.
The plane was i equipped with both voice and data recorders, said Master Sgt. Sandra Pishern at Dyess Air Force Base near Abilene, Texas, where the plane was based.
The crash occurred mid-morning at Sleeping Indian Mountain in a popular landmark known for a craggy rock peak shaped like an Indian chief laying or his back. It is located 12 to 15 miles outside of the Jackson airport amid the Grand Teton range, northwest of Jackson Hole.
"To me it loc ked like a fire brewing on Sleeping Indian," s aid Tim Tomkinson, night manager of Buskb 3ard Cab Co. "I saw this guy at the airport who s aid he watched this plane take head south l , and go left and then it blew up into a ball of f lame."
Witnesses said fires lingered well after a mushroom-st taped fireball sent the starlit sky aglow.
The C-130 was a so-called car plane that is used to shuttle presidential vehicles.
Deadbeat dad's belongings auctioned
The Associated Press
COLCHESTER, Vt. — Marilyn Nichols Kane watched as crowds of strangers picked through her former husband's lavish belongings, put up for sale to pay the hundreds of thousands he owes her for child support.
"I cried yesterday," Kane said of her first look at the dinnerware, crystal, jewelry, antiques and appliances amassed by the man called America's worst deadbeat dad. "I saw the evil in this—I saw the decadence."
Her former husband, precious metals consultant Jeffrey Nichols, is in jail in New York City. He owes an estimated $640,000 in back child support and pleaded guilty last month to a federal charge of leaving a state to avoid the obligation.
The contents of the large Vermont house he shared with his new wife, Suzan, were auctioned off to about 350 people who jammed two large tents at a moving company warehouse.
"I knew there was going to be a lot of stuff"
said auctiongoer Ruby Huston of Shelburne.
David Lloyd said he didn't want to get involve in the issues of the case. "It's a court-ordered sale and I'm here for the bargains," he said.
After their 17-year marriage ended, she raised their three children. In the meantime, prosecutors said, Nichols moved from New York to Florida to Canada to Charlotte, Vt., to escape his $10,000 monthly support obligation.
Kane, a New York real estate agent, has called the auction perfect justice.
Nichols and Suzan filled their house with furniture, dishes, knickknacks, antiques and pseudo-
antiques. She died of cancer last summer. In February, a judge ordered Nichols' belongings sold to pay some of what he owes Kane.
"This was a man who valued things over people," Kane s aid. "I feel so appalled at what this man accumulated in five years when he was not supporting his children."
She said s everal women came to the auction not to bid b it to meet her.
"There are women here who came up and said I have no m one ony, Marilyn, but you are my hero," Kane said. "They said, 'I will not give up because you did not give up.'"
Behind her, Raymond Camire muttered loudly in disagree ment.
"It's all politics," said Camire, 48, whose own marriage ended a few years ago. "They take a man and make him into a monster."
Three professors killed by student
Gunman hid gun in first-aid kit before defending master's thesis
The Associated Press
SAN DIEGO — San Diego State University is struggling to cope with the killings of three popular engineering professors, gunned down as they prepared to review a graduate student's thesis.
"I have no answers or explanations for this loss of human life and potential," university President Stephen Weber told about 1,000 people gathered for an impromptu memorial Friday afternoon.
Police said Frederick Martin Davidson fired at least 23 bullets into the professors as they were preparing to review his thesis Thursday, the final hurdle before a master's degree can be awarded.
"He was upset that his thesis had been turned down previously and thought the professors were out to get him," said police Lt. Jim Collins.
Before the meeting Thursday, Davidson sneaked into the classroom and hid a semiautomatic 9 mm pistol and five spare 15-round magazines in a first-aid kit, police said. Just before he was introduced, he pulled out the weapon and started firing, police said.
Davidson, 36, was booked for
investigation of murder and was being held at the San Diego County Jail.
The campus was mourning the death of Chen Liang, Davidson's primary adviser, and professors Constantinos Lyrintzis and D. Preston Lowrev III.
"These are three of the best professors we have in engineering," said Ed Handley, who just earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. "All of them were the most difficult, but they were the most popular. too."
Liang, 32, was collaborating with Davidson on research — funded by McDonnell Douglas Corp. — on metal alloys that can be twisted and retain their shape until heated.
He had more than 70 publications on so-called smart materials.
"He had all the makings of a superstar," said Pieter Frick, dean of engineering.
The father of two young sons, Liang had studied in Beijing and at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and University.
Lyrintzis, 36, was an associate professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics at the university since 1987. He worked on a NASA project while a research assistant at Columbia University and held degrees from Columbia and the National Technical University of Athens.
Lyrintzis, of Greece, and his wife,
Deanna, married three years ago.
In June, they took their 14-month-
old daughter, Sophia, to Greece to be baptized.
THE NEWS in brief
Mandela won't seek second term
The Associated Press
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — President Nelson Mandela formally told his party he won't seek re-election in 1999, the African National Congress
said vesterdav.
Mandela, 78, has repeatedly said he believes he is too old for a second term.
seek the party leadership again, came during a weekend meeting of the ANC's top decision-making body.
His formal announcement that he will not run in elections scheduled for 1999 and that he would not
Earlier this year, Mandela endorsed Deputy President Thabo Mbeki as his choice to take over the
presidency. Mbeki is also Mandela's deputy within the ANC.
Mandela became president in 1994 following South Africa's first all-race election.