Editing 78-07-B5 (section)

=== Transcript ===
American commercial aviation has a safety record unequaled in
all the world, but even so we still occasionally hear that dreaded news
flash of a plane that didn't make it. Occasionally I fly into
Washington's Dulles Airport, so a recent story in Electronic Engineering
Times worried me more than a little bit.

The air traffic controllers, those gentlemen who sit with their
eyes glued to a radar screen, "talking" planes into a safe landing
at Dulles have a complaint--a very legitimate complaint. It has to
do with the performance in wet weather of the Federal Aviation
Administration's surface detection system.

What we're talking about is the radar called the A.S.D.E.-2
which is used in bad weather to track aircraft after they drop to
altitudes of 40 feet or less. The radiating antenna is housed in what
is called a spherically shaped radome. That means it's in a round,
ball-shaped shelter. That ball is made of rubberized canvas. When it
rains or snows (which is when it's needed most) the moisture settles
on the ball and is soaked up by that rubberized fabric. This reduces
the power of the signal returns and the air controller sees a white
spot on his screen instead of the moving blip made by the airplane he's
tracking. Incidentally, this system is in use at about a dozen other
airports and the same complaint is made at all of them.

F.A.A. engineers have been experimenting with different designs
and shapes for the radome to find an answer to the problem. They
have come up with one that looks like an upside down tea cup. John
Curran, Chief of the Dulles airwave facilities field office, says this
shape they've found is the answer. "The moisture drops roll off the
dome like rain falling off an overhanging roof" he says.

Well, you'd say that solves the problem--we trade in the oversize
tennis balls for over-size inverted tea cups and we're all safer on a
rainy day. But hold on. Dulles airport is a federally-owned facility.
The change of shape is being blocked for aesthetic reasons by the
Department of Interiors Advisory Council of Historic Preservation.
Washington's Fine Arts Commission also objects to the proposed new
dome shape.

How did they get into the act? Well, it seems that the Dulles
Airport terminal building was recently nominated for the National
Register of Historic Places by the Secretary of Transportation upon
the advice of the Advisory Council of Historic Preservation. This is
a group that oversees the care of such designated buildings. So
anything that threatens to change the appearance of the airport building
is carefully looked at.

I hope by the time you hear this sanity has come to someone in
Washington, but at the moment the new and safer dome has been rejected
and the F.A.A. controllers who help get the big birds safely down has
lost to the Fine Arts Commission.

For me, I don't care whether it looks like an upside down tea
cup or an upside down garbage can. I'm for giving those controllers
what they want--especially when the weather is bad. 

This is Ronald Reagan.

Thanks for listening.
</TD>
<TD WIDTH="10%" ROWSPAN="2">&nbsp;</TD>
<TD VALIGN="TOP" HEIGHT="250">