Thanks to Mike Archer for his daily
Wildfire News of the Day e-mail where I learned in his WNOTD e-mail yesterday, October 11th) about a temporary Air Control Tower that is in operation at McClellan Air Attack base. Ordinarily McClellan has no tower and the pilots talk to each other as they are arriving, taxiing on the ground, and then departing. However, with twelve Airtankers working the various northern California wildfires out of McClellan, the air and ground space was a little busy so CAL FIRE called Tower Tech for help. Learn about Tower Tech in
this report with video from CBS News Sacramento. Unfortunately, I am unable to get the embed code provided by CBS News Sacramento to work, so I hope that you take about three minutes to go and watch the video.
Titus Gall, CEO of Tower Tech spoke with CBS Sacramento:
'The traffic becomes a little bit too complicated,' said Titus Gall, President and CEO of Tower Tech, Inc. . . .
'Everything that uses this airport is now talking to these guys,' Gall said, referring to the two-man team running the traffic control.
Typically, there is no air traffic control team at McClellan and the pilots simply communicate with each other when they need to land and depart.
The Tower Tech team is scheduling 12 air tankers on a loop, loading fire retardant, making drops and coming back to load up again. But the guys are also handling private planes here on business.
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