To think that regulation does anything but stifle creativity and strangle commerce is about as close to apostasy as you’re likely to get in aviation. And even if it weren’t, would you admit it in mixed company? That’s a rhetorical question. Don’t overthink it.
But one man’s onerous, suffocating rule is another’s golden opportunity to make a little money in the margins. One of the latter is David Wartofsky, the irrepressible and sometimes contrarian owner of Potomac Airport, a little country airport hard under the flight patterns of Reagan National Airport and Joint Base Andrews. That’s a sporting little bit of airspace where wandering off procedures will get you a Blackhawk or F-16 playmate, if not a little worse. But that’s a story for another day.
Wartofsky has a rep for, shall we say, alternative thinking, and one of the ideas he’s come up with is quite the amusing example of this. You probably haven’t thought about it much because you have your own problems, but putting automated weather sources like AWOS or ASOS on an airport is an expensive pain the ass. The FAA gets involved because it oversees such programs and state or local agencies meddle, too, requiring site surveys, permits and all manner of paper-generating masturbatory exercises that keep government agencies humming along, but don’t do much for the rest of us.
Wartofsky’s idea was to design a little aviation weather unit that (a) operates on the same frequency as the CTAF and (b) is so completely independent of regulatory entanglements that it’s even solar-powered and does all of its communicating via satellite link rather than landline which would, of course, require a trench and thus a permit and who knows what else. The device, which he calls a MicroTower, can literally be dumped off a truck at a suitable place on the airport and activated within a few hours.
What does it do, exactly? You can see–and hear–it in action in this video I shot at Potomac Airport recently. Basically, the MicroTower camps on the CTAF frequency–Unicom in most cases–and listens to be activated by microphone clicks from a pilot desiring weather information. It spews back wind, altimetry, visibility and runway advice, but it’s capable of more than that. For example, prior to takeoff, you can have it do a comm check by recording and playing back your radio output. It will even provide signal strength. Built into the machine is some rudimentary artificial intelligence to avoid spattering the frequency with long, unnecessary transmissions. It knows, for example, to shorten its transmissions if the frequency is busy with a lot of airplanes. It knows, too, to drop the visibility report if the vis is greater than 10 miles. And like a human pilot, it will clip its transmissions as necessary. It knows what time it is, too. If you call for an airport advisory, it will say “good evening,” and prompt you through a micro-tutorial to get more info.
One of the benefits of ASOS/AWOS, besides providing real-time aerodrome weather, is that these sensors are stitched together into a network via the Internet and this data provides useful information for forecast modeling. It can also be remotely accessed for flight-planning purposes. With no hardwiring to the Internet, how can the MicroTower do this? Two ways: via satellite comm or through a wireless node to an in-range router that can be hardwired without requiring permitting or trenching. The whole shebang can be remotely programmed and controlled through the satellite link. A pair of table-top-sized solar cells wired to a battery network keep the device perking along.
Wartofsky likes to say the MicroTower is to air traffic control as an ATM is to banking. Well, halfway, maybe. ATC implies traffic separation and IFR services of some sort, not just weather. And the MicroTower doesn’t do that. However, if the FAA kept its sticky fingers off the technology, you could see how it might someday evolve to at least provide traffic advisories. Once ADS-B technology is widely fielded, you can imagine how traffic data could be funneled to such a machine and bent-piped to airplanes that don’t have traffic capability. Increasingly, I’m wondering if there won’t be a fairly large population of airplanes operating out of country airports that won’t bother with ADS-B. I’m sure other capabilities can be built into it.
And speaking of country airports, they’re the MicroTower’s core market. Your well-heeled airports or those with towers can afford and will want AWOS/ASOS-type equipment, whose cost runs to the multiple hundred thousands and which require dedicated frequency assignment. Smaller airports that might be busy or are customer centric (or both) aren’t likely to be candidates for certified weather equipment. But for $100,000 or so, they can have one of these MicroTowers and get most of the benefits.
Potomac Aviation Technology–Wartofsky’s company–has about 150 of these systems scattered around the world, with about 100 in the U.S. They’re especially attractive in the aviation-developing world, including India and China. If you know the key commands, the MicroTower at Potomac will answer in Chinese.
Not bad for a little guerilla project intentionally designed to fly under the regulatory radar.
The AI Evil
I don’t think we need to worry much about the MicroTower suddenly becoming self aware and launching nuclear strikes against humanity. But if you’re interested in reading about people who do worry about the unknowns of AI, I suggest this article in The New Yorker. It reveals a real schism in the field, with some scientists insisting that true artificial intelligence is many years off, it it’s ever achieved at all.
But others worry about an explosion of super intelligence and point to developments happening much faster than even skeptical scientists expect. The ethical and philosophical implications are daunting to say the least. Machine super intelligence could expand at an exponential pace and become utterly unmanageable by the humans who invent it.The piece is worth a read.
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