Author: Chris Barrus

Fillmore VORTAC toasted

You won’t notice this as an airline passenger, but as a pilot this is a huge deal.

FIM is the primary NAVAID for jet traffic from Northern California and the Pacific Northwest into Southern California. Literally, every arrival into Burbank, Van Nuys, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, Long Beach, John Wayne/ Orange County, Los Alamitos, Camp Pendleton, Palomar and San Diego may navigate via FIM.

At this time there are no RNAV STARs planned or in existence which can substitute for these procedures. The permanent loss of the FIM would require every procedure now utilizing FIM to be redesigned and flight checked. Because of terrain/coverage and location issues, it is unlikely that other VORTACÂ’s will be able to adequately substitute for FIM. Radar and radio coverage is good in the area of FIM. At the current time ATC is vectoring aircraft along the route of flight to compensate for the loss of FIM.

 

Normally the VORTACs look like a little building with a cone antenna on top. I can’t imagine how hot the fire was when it swept through there.

fillmore_vortac

Fire

ash_carwindow.jpg The smoke from the various Los Angeles fires blew over Long Beach all day today making it feel like a volcano was going off. Enough ash had rained down to collect on parked cars, pile up on my staircase, and turn the sky yellow. Perversely, the Halloween Dog Parade was going on in Belmont Shore making the whole day seem like a Fellini movie.

Accidental Orion

Last week I took a tour of the Nevada Test Site and while I’ll get to a full description of that shortly, this thread in sci.space.tech was too good to not mention.

A 1957 atomic test called Pascal-B set off a small nuclear explosion in a 500 foot shaft that was covered by a metal lid. A quick thumbnail estimate of the shockwave effect on the metal lid gave a resulting velocity of six times the earth’s escape velocity and thus the legend of the “manhole cover in space” is born. One of the project scientists comments on the whole thing.