The White Falcon


The White Falcon - 09.04.1993, Blaðsíða 4

The White Falcon - 09.04.1993, Blaðsíða 4
Lighting crew Story and photos by J02 Carlos Bongioanni “How many individuals does it take to screw in a light bulb?” All of us have proba- bly heard or told a light-bulb joke at some point in our lives. However, the work in- volved in changing and fixing lights along an airport runway is anything but a joke. The airfield lighting crew at Naval Air Station, Keflavfk, specializes in light fixtures of all shapes and sizes. They maintain nearly 5,000 lights which line more than 50,000 feet of runways and taxiways. “It’s a never-ending battle,” said EMI Dennis Martin, airfield lighting leading petty officer. “We repair or replace on an average 15 to 25 lights daily. Naturally, light bulbs are going to bum out and occassionally strong winds will knock down a few light poles, but here in Iceland during the winter, snow plows cause the greatest damage.” Martin inspects a light on a snow-covered runway. According to Martin, the force of the snow thrown from the plows often snaps the lights that run along the edges of the runways. The plows also dig up a number of the “center” lights that run down the middle of the run- way. These flat, 30-pound light units are sturdy, but no match against a snow plow. They are often mangled beyond recognition, but thanks to the airfield lighting crew, they’re not beyond help. keeps planes out of the dark Martin looks up from work as an F-15 flies over. After making daily rounds of the airfield, replacing any non-operational lights, the lighting crew brings to its shop all the lights needing repair. Nikulas Sveinsson, airfield lighting Shop Foreman, has seen many changes during the 36 years he has worked at the base, but he says the need for reliable lighting has never changed and will always be of utmost importance as long as there is an airfield here. “We take pride in our job, knowing that many people rely on our work. Sometimes it gets crazy around here, but we always try to do the best job possible. If we have to go outside in the freezing cold and dig through snow to fix a light, we’ll do it,” said Sve- insson. In January of this year, a snow plow knocked out a light and its concrete base, shorting out the lighting along an entire taxi way. It took airfield lighting two days of dig- ging through several feet of snow, going from one light to the next, before they found the problem. The importance of keeping the airfield lights 100 percent operational cannot be over emphasized. “Because we have so much adverse weather in Iceland, and because it’s dark so much of the time in the winter, lights play a major role in our operations,” said Capt. David Kooney, Assistant Director of Operations at the 57th Fighter Squadron. “If the lights went out, we’d have to divert our planes all the way to Scotland. That’s a long distance to fly.” In 1992, the air traffic tower at NAS Keflavfk recorded more than 63,000 take- offs and/or landings at the airfield. Many of those movements depended on the lighting system at the airfield. The personnel work- ing behind the scenes at airfield lighting may not be as visible as the lights they keep illu- minated, but the results of their efforts are noticed on a daily basis. “It’s one of thosj jobs if we do it right, nobody knows we’: here, but if we don’t do it right, everybody from the admiral on down will be after us,” said Martin. ire Jon Emilsson, airfield lighting electric makes repairs on a strobe light. 4 The White Falcon

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The White Falcon

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