Airport update - Business plan, open house, personnel, runway lights and airport paving

Business plan

Review of our business plan by HLUET committee has been pushed back from August 16th to an evening meeting in September. This will likely push out review by the Board of Supervisors until October. Watch our website or the HULET agenda website (Meeting Calendar - The County of Santa Clara, California (http://sccgov.iqm2.com/Citizens/calendar.aspx) for updates on the date and time. I will also send an email with updated information when the date and time has been scheduled.

Open house

The annual Reid-Hillview Airport Day open house has been scheduled for September 8th from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. As in past years, the open house will include aircraft display, car show, musical acts, a model aircraft show, tank rides and food vendors. Tenant access to the airport will be limited to the gate off of Swift Avenue or through the individual FBO property.

If you have an aircraft you would like to display, please contact Walt or Greg at Trade Winds aviation (408) 729-5100 pretty quickly. In addition to a fuel discount voucher, they will also be providing the documentation necessary for those who need to show their airplane for tax purposes.

More information will be provided on airport access as we get closer to the event. Also check our website for the latest flyer and information.

Personnel

As many of you know, we had a recent retirement at the Airport and now have a vacant Airport Operations Worker position. We are currently recruiting for the position and the job notice is posted on our website. If you know of anybody interested in the position who either has experience in the field, or a formal education in aviation, please encourage them to check out the job posting.

E16 Runway Lights

The new pilot controlled lighting (PCL) radio and runway lighting regulator were recently installed at the San Martin Airport. The updated system now works on 3 different click settings. 3-clicks turns the lights on at 10% of available power, 5-clicks provides 30% of available power, while 7-cliks provides 100% of available power. I hope you enjoy this improvement over the past lighting options.

Paving

The paving and marking projects were mostly completed in July with the second coat of paint on all of the surface markings. At Reid-Hillview we encountered additional problems with taxiway Charlie between the two runways that have resulted in an extended closure of that taxiway. In addition there were some challenges with pavement shedding shortly after it was put down. This was a result of the paving process and not unexpected. The solution has been regular sweeping while the pavement continues to cure. The final project-planned sweeping will occur tomorrow. We will continue to monitor the situation and encourage you to let Femi, Ken or Eric know if you notice any problems. Unless otherwise needed, after tomorrow we will revert to a quarterly sweeping program at each of the airports.

At San Martin we received several comments on the lack of cornering centerlines, officially known as curved cockpit-over-centerline steering markings, at the taxiway and taxilane intersections. This is a result of current FAA design standards for runway and taxiway markings which dictate specific pavement dimensions at intersections where cockpit-over-centerline markings are installed. The pavement at San Martin does not comply with the current design standards so we were unable to include those markings with the new paving and marking project. We will work with the FAA in the future to obtain authorization for a modification from standard that would allow us to replace those markings.

As always, feel free to reach out to me if you would like to discuss anything related to the county airports.

Eric Peterson
Director County Airports
408-918-7700 x27722
www.countyairports.org​