From USA Today.

WESTBURY, N.Y. - Workers at one of the nation's busiest air traffic control centers have found a novel way to keep their radar screens working and 6,000 planes flying each day.

Cheap, household fans blow cooling air on the more troublesome of the aging, 22-inch radar displays.

If the out-of-date electronics get too hot, the screens can fail and threaten to interrupt or delay flights at New York's three major airports.

The units are so old that replacement parts are no longer made. Maintenance workers must scavenge for backup electronics. And a replacement system isn't due to be installed until sometime in 2000.

So far, the deteriorating equipment has not slowed traffic significantly or created a hazard. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says it can ensure that breakdowns don't worsen substantially.

But FAA officials, controllers and maintenance workers all acknowledge that upgrades are long overdue for the radar displays, which are the key instruments that keep planes safely apart.

Because New York-area airports handle nearly one of 20 of the nation's commercial flights each day, delays here could cause enormous ripples in airports across the country.

''This is not a joke. This is not Chicken Little,'' says Brian Fallon, safety representative at the New York center for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. ''This is some real serious stuff. It's really been by the grace of God that we haven't been confronted yet by a real catastrophic breakdown.''

Concern about aging equipment is nearly universal throughout the nation's air traffic control system. Much of the system functions on equipment that was designed and built decades ago. The FAA is embarking on a massive top-to-bottom overhaul, but with few exceptions, improvements have been slow in coming.

If the air traffic control system is in dire need of improvement nationwide, it is especially critical in New York.

Air traffic controllers here direct more than 2 million flights a year, most of them using Kennedy, LaGuardia and the Newark, N.J., airports. Taken together, flights at the three airports total significantly more than any single airport or metropolitan area in the country. Yet New York's radar displays are unlike units found anywhere else in the nation. They were introduced as test models in 1987, then improved and redesigned before they were placed in other air traffic control centers. However, the originals remained in use here.

Now, the units are so outdated that a 1997 federal report predicted that by the end of 1998, radar display failures would begin occurring so frequently that they could slow traffic into the already congested New York airspace. If too many screens fail at the same time, controllers must keep planes farther apart, which would cause delays.

Battered by constant repairs and used far beyond their expected five-year life span, the radar screens break down frequently. Eighty-five failures were logged in 1998, an 8% increase from the year before.

Henry Brown, president of the Professional Airways Systems Specialists in New York, the maintenance workers union, says his members visit Radio Shack regularly or ''search the streets'' to find parts for jury-rigged repairs.

''We've been able to stay one step ahead of the devil,'' Brown says. ''I'm just not sure how long we're going to be able to do that.''

For now, the radar screens in New York manage to function well most of the time. Significant delays have not materialized, FAA officials say, because of steps they have taken already.

New vents in the cavernous control room have moderated temperatures. Maintenance workers redesigned the display consoles to improve the flow of cooling air. A new air-conditioning system also will be built soon.

''We're going to keep it running, and we're going to keep it running safely,'' says Monte Belger, the FAA's acting deputy administrator.

The FAA also is upgrading virtually all the electronics at the facility, from radars to computer networks, although the work will not help directly with the display screens.

Officials are working with unionized maintenance workers and flight controllers to ready a new radar display system to replace the old one. But software problems and delays in that system were confirmed last week. It might not be ready for New York until the end of 2000.

The New York facility is one of 184 so-called Terminal Radar Approach Control centers, or TRACONs, run by the FAA. They form a kind of midpoint in the FAA's air traffic management network, monitoring planes outside the narrow radius around each airport and below the high-altitude jet pathways. New York's TRACON covers an area about 60 miles around Manhattan.

Controllers, housed in a windowless structure surrounded by a barbed wire-topped fence, sit at banks of terminals in an eerily dark room lighted mostly by the circular sweep of the radar displays and a few stray lights on knobs and communication equipment.

The displays were supposed to be phased out in the early 1990s, but the replacement system was scrapped when the FAA canceled a systemwide upgrade in 1994.

The biggest potential for problems occurs when several displays fail at the same time. At least 15 times from Jan. 1 to Nov. 30, 1996, four or five displays were being repaired simultaneously, says the 1997 federal report, written by the center's managers and maintenance officials.

Link at

http://www.sightings.com/ufo2/nycomp.htm

Andy

2 digits. 1 mechanism.

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), January 30, 1999

Answers

Now, what happens if y2k doesn't cause them to blip out on their own and the grid goes down? The fans quit working and TSHTF? LOLOL...okay it wasn't that funny, but I tried.

-- Other Lisa (LisaWard2@aol.com), January 30, 1999.

This news report sounds like bureaucratic lobbying to me. Heating ventilation and air conditioning is not exactly as scary as $1.5 trillion worth of broken code. Besides, the house fans from Wal-Mart are probably significantly higher quality than the low-bid government garbage that was installed in the first place.

-- Puddintame (dit@dot.com), January 30, 1999.

"For want of a nail etc..." - makes you wonder about what planet these people are on.

Talk about when the s*** hit's the fan!

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), January 30, 1999.

And we're worrying about conditions in the emerging countries.

-- Youd Betta (Pray@Landing.com), January 30, 1999.

I hate you mother fuckers. I hope you all die!! Your all crazy lunatics. I hope your peckers fall off. You all better hope I never see you in a dark alley. OH I HATE YOU ALL SO MUCH.

-- (Y2K My @SS.Com), January 30, 1999.

Y2KMy@Ass.Com popped out of his hole again.

-- Elmer Fudd (Aiming@Y2KMy@Ass.Com), January 30, 1999.

Thank you Y2K fearing ass, I live on fear. Yours is very sweet.

-- Hunger (fe@rvampire.old), January 30, 1999.

Lisa, if it works like here in Cleve., there is a big (about the size of a small 2-story house) UPS sitting somewhere nearby,and a very large generator which will run through the UPS once it comes up. tghe REAL question is ::: Are the fans plugged into red sockets???

cr

ps Red sockets typically are on the emergency generated power circuit. Other sockets may or may not be.

-- Chuck, night driver (rienzoo@en.com), January 30, 1999.

Here's the link

http://www.sightings.com/ufo2/nycomp.htm

Mary

-- Mary (doesnotmatter@thistime.com), January 31, 1999.

http://www.sightings.com/ufo2/nycomp.htm

Sorry about the first one.

-- Mary (tryingitagain@dot.com), January 31, 1999.

Typical of emergency repairs to old and deceipt electronic systems....no mention of year 2000 concerns in there, but I agree, it is easier to remediate a system that runs properly, than one built from duct tape and WalMart fans.

Losing 5-10 computer displays "regularly" now, but fewer in 1997 and 1998 indicates that the equipmwnt itself is in its "end of life" failure mode - the trend will continue escalating with any given console randomly "konking out" since they were all installed at the same time. (These kind of failure rate increases are textbook examples of "reliability" failures used in QA classes. However, few are found in real world industrial cases because equipment is replaced before it gets this far down the lifecycle.) But this is governemnt - and the bureacrats evidently think they can con equipment like they can con voters.

As stated, nothing directly attributed to Y2K here, but these existing conditions (and the time frame) will slow Y2K remediation, slow repair efforts of busted gear, and dramatically increase "fix on failure" times after Y2K strikes.

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), January 31, 1999.

The "good" news here is that with the reduced level of jet fuel available post-2000, ATC probably won't have a big problem scheduling traffic via VFR.

-- a (a@a.a), January 31, 1999.