The pink bedroom

See?
Even the ceiling!

Recent arrivals and a follow up

Sorry guys, not much happening on the ole blog this time around -

Thanks to a recent certification (congrats Yoda!), my overtime for this week was cancelled, and that means . . . a 2-day weekend. Whoopee!!! Time to paint the pink bedroom! And the appliances are supposed to be delivered today also; I think I'm doing my part to invigorate the economy: dishwasher, stove, refrigerator, garage-door opener, lawnmower . . . in addition to the afore-mentioned gallons and gallons of paint, with all the accessories.

The follow-up: In response to some of my recent entries, I've received some (unpublished) comments about runway safety at LAX and airborne wake turbulence. While neither request will be addressed in today's entry, I am working on responses and/or giving them consideration for possible future columns.

Horse racing fans know that the Breeder's Cup World Championship was run in LA this year at Santa Anita. This was the first time that the same track has hosted the event in consecutive years, as we had it here last year for the event's 25th anniversary. Horses pass through LAX regularly, although we usually don't get to see them from the tower. I spotted these horse boxes being unloaded from a KLM flight the week before the Cup.

Quite some time ago, I mentioned that Cathay Pacific had started bringing B777's into LAX, but bemoaned the fact that at the time they were only here after dark. Well, no more:

More recently, Japan Air has also started showing up in B777's. Like Cathay, we're still seeing B747's as well - for now anyway.

Today is Veterans Day in the US, as well as Armistice Day and Remembrance Day in other parts of the world. I want to thank all of those who have served and those who are serving now. And for everybody else: Fly your flag today and thank a vet!

Day off

I don't apologize for the dearth of recent entries, but I will mention some of the reasons why:

I had one day off this week, and one the week before that (and the one before that, and . . . ) While the overtime money is nice, the chores and such tend to pile up. As a result, I'm halfway through replacing a static line behind the Baron's panel, and no progress has been made in over a week. Meanwhile I finally put the truck back together, only to discover that it still leaks.

The good news: After nearly two months of mortgage and escrow wrangling, I finally got the keys to the house this past Saturday. The not-so-good news: Since then, I've had no time to even go by and check the mail, much less get started on the painting and other things that I'd like to get done before moving furniture next month. Photos sometime in the future.

This week's day off has been booked for nearly a month: I went to see a radio program last night. No, that's not a misprint. I went up to Pasadena to see a taping of Wait,Wait . . . Don't Tell Me! Afterwards, I got to meet the hosts of the program, who somehow don't look at all like they sound. The show is very topical, and so the taping I attended will probably air this weekend - I'm on the right side, as you face your radio. Spoiler Alert: skateboard pro Tony Hawk is the celebrity guest for the 'Not my job' segment. What probably won't make the show is how he skated onto the stage when they introduced him, and how he gave his board to Peter Sagal as he was leaving at the end of the segment. While the radio program is an hour long, the taping session took nearly twice that long, as there were some edits and re-takes that will get spliced in before air time.

As Pasadena is a bit of a drive from Long Beach even on a good day, I went up early to avoid the traffic. Like five or six hours early. A bit of overkill, to be sure, but I had noticed a movie theater across the street from the Pasadena Civic Center. So I saw Amelia - a film about the life of Amelia Earhart. Nothing too surprising there - the plane still disappears (sorry if I gave it away). While there were some neat shots of an Electra flying over some beautiful landscapes, I doubt if we'll be hearing about this one at the Oscars.

After the movie and before the show, I wandered around a bit and discovered that Pasadena has its own ice rink! Meanwhile, at the ballroom next door to the civic center, there was a big to-do for the retiring police chief. On display was a Plymouth Satellite police car from the late 1960's, looking better now than it ever did when it was in service - or even when it was new. They also had a new Honda police bike with enough lights to fill in for one of LAX's approach light systems if needed. I noticed that the bike's certified speedo went up to 160 mph. Yikes! You would have to be absolutely insane to try and go that fast on our highways, much less the streets.

And that's pretty much it for now. Don't forget to fly your flags for Veterans' Day, coming up Wednesday the 11th.

What happened? Part 4 - Equipment Notes

This segment will be, at least for now, the final piece in the series about the October 25th runway incursion. Those coming late to the party can recap the story:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

LAX has several systems in place to prevent runway incursions. Some are for the pilots, another for the controllers.

For the pilots, we have illuminated runway hold lines installed in the pavement of the taxiways. These are always on, independent of the runway lights, and are bright enough to be visible even during the day. At each runway intersection, there is a line of alternating flashing white lights that face away from the runway to mark the hold line. Their sole purpose is to highlight the runway hold line for aircraft approaching the runway; they are not visible to the pilot on the runway.

These two shots both show the runway hold line lights. In the top shot, they're the line of white lights at the top/left, marking the hold line at H-6 and runway 25 left. In the lower shot, you can see the runway hold line for runway 25 right/seven left running across the top of the shot, with the associated lights. If you look closely, you can see the alternating lights in between the bright lights. These lights are always on, day and night.

The other warning system we have for the pilots is also a series of lights installed in the pavement, and likewise requires no input from the controllers. Known as Runway Status Lights, these lights only illuminate when the runway is occupied with an arriving or departing aircraft. I first saw these in action at DFW - the first airport to have them installed. LAX was the second, although not all intersections are covered. The system has runway entrance lights on taxiways that intersect the runway which come on when the system detects an aircraft on short final to land or rolling for departure on that runway. The lights go out as the arriving/departing aircraft passes through the intersection. Unlike the runway hold line lights, the runway status lights are red and run along the taxiway centerline:

In these shots of the east end of the north complex, you can see the white runway hold line lights running across taxiway V at the edges of both runways. In addition, the red runway status lights are illuminated on V and E-8, indicating that an aircraft is about to land on runway 24 left (actually 6 right in this particular case, but the system is bi-directional) and it is not safe for an aircraft to enter the runway at these intersections. Unfortunately, my camera doesn't do a good job of photographing lights and so the color is pretty washed out - in real life the runway status lights are a very intense red. A close inspection of the second photo, which is a close up of our recently-relocated taxiway E-8, will reveal a string of green lights along the taxiway centerline as well as the red runway status lights. These green lights simply mark the taxiway centerline, and are a standard fixture at many airports, just as blue lights mark the taxiway edges and white lights mark the runway edges. The taxiway and runway edge and centerline lighting is controlled from the control tower, but the hold line lights are not. The runway status lights are autonomous, although the tower can shut the system down if it's malfunctioning.

As I mentioned earlier however, not all of our runway/taxiway intersections are covered by the runway status light system. Taxiway M, where this incursion took place, is not one of the protected intersections. The diagram below shows which intersections at LAX currently are covered by RWSL:

As you can see in this graphic borrowed from the Sensis site, not all of our intersections have RWSL coverage. In addition, one of our runways is fitted with another facet of the system: Lights that warn an aircraft in postion on (or on short final for) runway 24 left that the runway is not safe for departure (or landing).

In addition to the lighting systems designed to aid the pilots in identifying runway hold lines and unsafe runway intersections, the controllers have the Airport Surface Detection Equipment, or ASDE, to help us keep track of aircraft and vehicles moving on the ground. Built into the ASDE is a safety logic system that projects possible runway collision hazards and warns the controllers. When it detects an arriving or departing aircraft, the system will illuminate the runway hold lines on the tower ground display. These lines will drop at each intersection as the aircraft passes. If the safety logic projects a possible conflict, the affected targets are highlighted in red boxes on the display and an audio 'runway occupied' or 'go around' alert message is heard. Part of our regular checklist is checking the alert message volume level, and trust me when I tell you that no one in the cab can possibly miss it when the thing goes off. In addition, anytime it does go off the supervisor on duty has to investigate the situation and make an entry in the daily log. The system also has replay capability, allowing for investigations afterwards. Unfortunately, I do not have permission to show you our equipment or displays, so the best I can do is give you some links to some sites where you can read more:

Sensis

Wikipedia

This is a copy of the image on the Wikipedia entry on ASDE-X, showing part of Atlanta Hartsfield airport (KATL) tower's display of the south side of the airport. Runways are black, taxiways are gray. You can see the green runway hold lines lit up at each intersection on the lower runway (27 left), where the arriving aircraft (DAL723) is just over the runway threshhold. The longer runway (27 right) has a departure about mid-field, and the hold lines ahead of it are still up, while the ones behind it have gone out. You can see several previous arrivals waiting to cross, the next departure in position, and several more departures in line on the taxiway. The yellow icon for the first waiting aircraft denotes that aircraft to be a wake turbulence airplane, either a B757 or a heavy.