Houston County Airport will no longer offer GPS service (newspaper article)
Dan Hoehn
The Caledonia Argus
Persons flying into the Houston County Airport, located just south of
Caledonia, will have to depend solely on visual controls. As of Nov.
29, 2008, the local airport was forced to cancel its global
positioning system (GPS) service it had been offering to incoming and
departing air craft.
The Houston County Board learned of this development at the Nov. 25
board meeting. According to County Highway Engineer Brian Pogodzinski,
the State Aeronautics Board had reviewed the runway situation at the
airport and made recommendations a number of years ago. The county was
under the impression it still had substantial time to conduct a study
of the recommendations and formulate a plan. Unfortunately, the state
board accelerated the time frame for having the airport come into
compliance. Time ran out as of last Saturday.
According to Pogodzinski, the county would have to conduct some runway
improvements, move a number of airplane hangers the state felt were
too close to the runways, and cut down a number of trees that are on
private land near the airport. The improvements would require the
county obtaining approximately 130 acres of land and an additional 60
acres of easements.
“The bottom line is the recommendations from the state would take a
lot of time and one heck of a pile of money,” Commissioner Dave
Corcoran said.
“That is correct,” Pogodzinski replied.
“Do we really need GPS at our airport?” Commissioner Tom Bjerke
asked.
Pogodzinski said the GPS system is mainly used during foggy weather
when the La Crosse Airport is fogged in. He didn’t feel there would be
a real impact for Houston County.
“With this timeline, and the costs involved, it appears as if this is
a done deal,” Bjerke noted.
No action was taken on this issue.
In other board action:
Primary launch site
Tom Molling of the County Highway Department told the board the
Caledonia Area Chamber of Commerce had requested the county airport
serve as the second choice for the annual Bluff Valley Balloon Rally,
which will take place this weekend.
Over the years, the balloon rally has always been held at the airport.
Up until two years ago, the FAA had allowed the county to close the
airport to all air traffic all day Saturday and on Sunday morning. The
FAA will no longer allow the airport to be closed all day. So the past
two years, county employees have had to close the airport during the
Saturday morning launch, re-open it for the rest of the morning, close
it again for the afternoon launch, and re-open it again after the
balloons were up in the air. Then, if weather permitted the third
launch Sunday morning, county employees would have to go through the
procedure a third time.
According to Molling, the cost if there were three launches over the
weekend, is about $1,600 in overtime and weekend pay. He added he was
told the Balloon Rally committee was looking at an in-town launch and
wanted to have the county airport as a backup in case the weather was
too warm, making the launch site at the high school campus too soft
and muddy.
“The balloon rally is the major part of Caledonia’s winter
celebration. I feel we need to support this,” Commissioner Ann
Thompson said.
“If we would just know if the launch was going to be at the airport,
we could make the necessary arrangements,” Molling added.
A member of the balloon committee was attending the meeting and felt
if it was more workable for the county, the airport could still be
considered the primary launch site.
A motion was made and unanimously passed to consider the air port the
primary launch site for the balloon rally.