Wind turbines around airports

[oldyellr]

Is it a good idea? It seems that the Ontario Liberal Government's Green Energy Act trumps air safety with this plan to put 152-metre (500-feet) tall wind turbines next to Collingwood Regional Airport.

http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/st ... 74421.html

[Mr Willa]

500' that seems very high for the wind turbines, r u sure your numbers are correct.

[oldyellr]

The new ones are that high.

[Bede]

It is a known fact that wind turbines interfere with VOR signals.

https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q= ... 7494,d.b2I

I don't know why TC or NavCanada haven't stepped up to the plate and want a review of projects before they go up.

[teacher]

Trust me, they are that high and taller. The Green Energy act is a joke and robs people of the right to have a say in zoning of green energy projects. Several are going up near our place. 500+ feet tall. If you can't convince people of your agenda you change the law and ram it down people's throats. $16 billion and counting of wasted money subsidizing money losing power projects.

[dahspeers]

Right at the end of the downwind for 31. Its a genius idea. We've been doing lots to fight it, but being green trumps safety.

[tons-o-fun]

Not familiar with Collingwood but Chatham is another place being hammered with windmills. More going up day after day within the centreline and downwind of the airport. Its absolutely ridiculous. They have numerous ifr operators on the field that are one of those corporations that when they get out the their vehicles they have to chock them and do circle checks,wear hardhats,steel toe boots, and daily ladder inspections yet operate out of an airport surrounded by windmills. Think im overeacting? Try the rnav appr onto rwy 06. In marginal weather you can see blades moving out of your peripherals at the same height as you. Throw in an engine failure in imc with ice in say a pig of an airplane Jetstream you have zero margin for error and likely end up tangled in a windmill. Dont even get me started with the ndb circling. Im sure the client would love to hear about that. Truth hurts....Chatham is an unsafe airport due to windmills and its getting worse.

We'll have to sit and wait till an accident happens with one of these windmills, like many regulations they'll be written in blood.

Here's some stories on what the windmill companies are doing to keep things quiet with a little hush money. For every windmill the company has to move or delete due to pilot outcry they deduct more money. Is this Soviet Russia?

http://www.chathamdailynews.ca/2012/07/ ... questioned

http://ckdp.ca/2012/07/12/pattern-energ ... -upgrades/

http://www.chathamdailynews.ca/2013/01/ ... he-airport

[Prairie Chicken]

Make darn sure those things don't penetrate the OLS (obstacle limitation surface) of certified airports -- or the airports could lose their certification! Airports formerly owned by TC mostly have zoning regs which would protect them, assuming people know the zoning regs exist & ensure they are enforced.

[oldyellr]

Well, it looks like TC is ordering the wind turbines around Chatham Airport be taken down.

http://www.lfpress.com/2013/06/14/conce ... esponsible

[Genetk44]

Trust me, they are that high and taller. The Green Energy act is a joke and robs people of the right to have a say in zoning of green energy projects. Several are going up near our place. 500+ feet tall. If you can't convince people of your agenda you change the law and ram it down people's throats. $16 billion and counting of wasted money subsidizing money losing power projects.

Gee...sounds a lot lie Quebec.

[single_swine_herder]

A community near me is quite proud of having been approved for a 2 million dollar grant to install a windmill in the town and have it wired into the grid.

In the news release, it stated that because of the town's reputation for being a fairly consistently windy place, the windmill will generate $28,000 of electrical energy in the next year.

Sounds like a solid investment to me .... over 200 years to break even at today's power rates even if zero maintenance is performed on those moving parts.

Another town not far away is putting up a smaller 100 foot high tower equipped with a 50 Kw generator, expected to have an estimated 30 year lifespan. It costs of slightly less than 500 grand in captal outlay and O&M which is expected to produce about $4,500 in power per year.

The aspect of navigation aids is an interesting one and any avionics tech knows the great lengths they have to go to when it comes to installing navcom antennas on a helicopter due to the signal nulls and nodes created by rotor movement.

For those with a mind for such things, heres a study done on the effect of Wind Turbines on VOR signals, and it was demonstrated to have a deteriorating influence due to multipath issues. Presumably the same would apply to VHF coms, although the VOR is a phase dependent aid, not so much with AM mode comms.

[dashx]

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybre ... 41441.html

Yes Virginia it can be done ...........

Organize a fly in perhaps?

Hey maybe you could even get Jim Cuddy to come and sing for you.......Its only a hop from Burbank Field to Collingwood.

But hold on the fort here I didn't hear any complaining from Edenvale........

Well at least not yet.....



Organize it and they will come.....

[The Raven]

Does anyone know how far the wind turbines are from the Chatham-Kent airport?

[fleet16b]

It has been announced that Dunnville Airport
will close down this summer as a windmill farm is
going up on the airport property

[Aeroplane17]

Does anyone know how far the wind turbines are from the Chatham-Kent airport?

In the circuit, on each ifr appr within 5nm of a/p. If you actually flew in there you'd be shocked that this has been allowed. Typically green energy though, build it fast before anyone notices and then expect the taxpayer to pay to take it down. Cue Mr.Mcguinty riding off into the sunset. What a joke this province is.

[teacher]

http://www.sachem.ca/news/dunnville-air ... se-may-30/

[The Mole]

They give off an amazing amount of wake turbulence, about the same as a 737. Use caution flying downwind of one. My personnel experience flying behind the one on Grouse Mountain when I poured concrete for the Zipline.


The light flicker would drive me insane. These aren't your grandpas windmill's from the farm.

[Genetk44]

They give off an amazing amount of wake turbulence, about the same as a 737. Use caution flying downwind of one. My personnel experience flying behind the one on Grouse Mountain when I poured concrete for the Zipline.


The light flicker would drive me insane. These aren't your grandpas windmill's from the farm.

Wow...that shadow flicker is obnoxious...talk about ruining your quality of life!!

[StudentPilot]

Ah...but their good buddy Joe is making money off of the wind turbines (and possibly paying off some politicians/BS artists [aka PR guys] to get the laws they want passed) so it is all good. The general population doesn't matter these days.

[Colonel Sanders]

... and Ontario's Liberal Hero, Dalton McGuinty has
resigned his seat to avoid any responsibility for any
of his wrongdoings.

He won't even talk to anybody. I guess he's too
busy, deleting emails and shredding documents.

The damage Dalton McGuinty has done to Ontario
(including this expensive Green idiocy) is immense.
If nothing else, we are now crippled with insane
public debt for years to come. Expect very high
taxes and very little from the government, as it
spends most of it's revenue to service it's crippling
debt in the future, incurred by irresponsible governments
in the past.

How Greece got to be our economic model is not
entirely clear to me.

[JayVee]

And for doing such a great job, he walks away with a third of a million.

[Genetk44]

... and Ontario's Liberal Hero, Dalton McGuinty has
resigned his seat to avoid any responsibility for any
of his wrongdoings.

He won't even talk to anybody. I guess he's too
busy, deleting emails and shredding documents.

The damage Dalton McGuinty has done to Ontario
(including this expensive Green idiocy) is immense.
If nothing else, we are now crippled with insane
public debt for years to come. Expect very high
taxes and very little from the government, as it
spends most of it's revenue to service it's crippling
debt in the future, incurred by irresponsible governments
in the past.

How Greece got to be our economic model is not
entirely clear to me.

Like I said....lsounds like Quebec.

[single_swine_herder]

... ......

The damage Dalton McGuinty has done to Ontario
(including this expensive Green idiocy) is immense.
If nothing else, we are now crippled with insane
public debt for years to come. .......

But Colonel, he's done so much for the people .... it's all about the people..... oh, and you can't possibly forget all the great work done solidly supporting the Teacher's Union, because it's all about the children. Surely you can't be advocating that the fruit of our collective loins be denied a proper education based upon the progressive syllabus developed by the Toronto School Board?

He's taken the first bold steps toward the creation of a true egalitarian society where absolutely everyone will have an equal outcome regardless of degree of input .... now that's fair isn't it? I hope you're not going to fall back on the old regressive and heartless concept that people make choices in life that have consequences .... that's just so worn out and fails to register with today's voter.

And regarding your comment about the Green Energy program .... few things stimulate production of endorphins in a Liberal or Green party supporter to the degree that a wind turbine or a huge black solar panel of photo-voltaic array can. Of course, there is the small matter of how filthy and polluting the production process is to create those panels, what with the rare earth metals and chemicals involved and everything, but that stuff happens somewhere else ... so therefore it doesn't really happen. An Electrical Engineer buddy told me that for general use among the population, solar cells will simply never produce more energy than it takes to produce them, and the difference is made up by government grants or by forcing the overall cost of electrical energy so high as to make the photo-voltaic cell to look good when it really isn't.

Wind turbines? Ya gotta love em. They reach the break even point in maybe a half century of operation. Now there's an investment for the Great Grandchildren.

Now, on to your comments about high taxes and the inference that the value of goods and services is not in a proper ratio to be considered "a good deal." While I will concede tax rates are a tiny bit higher than desirable, you need to look at all that McGuinty spending as an "investment," not pointless profligate spending in the proverbial "drunken sailor on shore leave."

Debt? What debt? If anyone complains about not being paid, we just tell 'em too bad. They are after all just large corporations and banks that loaned the money and bought bonds ... right? All this extremist BS about "the little guy" having his pension funds tied up in these things is nothing but clap-trap.

I think the ex-Premier did an absolutely wonderful job and is worth every single penny he managed to negotiate upon his leaving office. Think of all those long nights spent pouring over documents, attending think tanks at York University, addressing and interacting with the Student Council at the U of T to hear their views on the direction the province should take in the next few decades, etc. That has considerable worth.

Now, on to our real source of Provincial pride .... the contribution Premier McGuinty made to the state of aviation in the Province. Although Federally regulated, Ontario should not be downplayed and given credit for having created an Air Ambulance system without equal in the world.

The people have received excellent value for money in the form of the ORNGE operations. One need only look at their headquarters to see how well that flight department funded by the people of Ontario is doing.

Your chest should almost burst with pride due to a syncopated rapidly thumping heart which matches rotor RPM every time you see one of the ORNGE AW139 helicopters overhead, knowing your well spent tax money is being dedicated to such a worthy and noble cause.

The use of the single engine PC-12 for medevac ops is a superb example of cost effectiveness being at the forefront of their thinking .... after all, the only people who could criticize the use of single engine aircraft for flight over Lake Superior in December would be those dastardly aircraft salesmen who just want to have the province squander money on something with two engines because of tradition based thinking.

There are those who may try to make a big deal out of what some allege is a lack of proper oversight, but I prefer to think of it in terms of the operation not being hampered by micro-management of their daily flight operations. They enjoyed a degree of freedom from oversight and meddling.

If they are aren't free to experiment and develop new ideas, techniques, and equipment, the service will stagnate. You have an engineering background, and must understand that not every bold new concept is immediately successful and despite encouraging data the device under test fails to meet the hoped for outcome.

Such is the case with the McGuinty government. He did a wonderful job of advancing liberal thought .... an even better job of it than did Bob Rae.

[Colonel Sanders]

[Troubleshot]

After managing a Wind Turbine park for almost the last 2 years reading this thread is like reading an aviation article in the news...so, so wrong and mis-informed. But hey keep it going, it is quite funny.