A personal history written and submitted by Jim Anez, Jamestown Flight Service

Miles City was a Level 1 facility with a traffic count that justified Level 2 status. There had been a freeze on upgrading facilities so I, like those before me, decided to move on. During 1977, I submitted a few bids to Level 2 facilities and in the late fall I was notified that I’d been selected for a position at Jamestown with a transfer date in January 1978.

I arrived in Jamestown in mid-January to find temperatures stuck around 20º below and it stayed that until near the end of February. It had snowed a lot in November or December and although it never really snowed much the rest of the winter, it never thawed either. There were huge piles of snow all around the airport and during orientation and training I had to take a lot of airport information on faith because I never saw some of the airport until spring.

The Jamestown FSS flight plan area consisted all of southeast North Dakota and included Fargo where most of our workload was generated. In early 1979, Fargo was transferred to the Grand Forks FSS flight plan area and overnight we had very little to do. I couldn’t imagine staying in Jamestown with the low activity level so asked for a transfer a few months later.

WEATHER ISSUES

Don’t ever talk to the “media”
As weather observers we maintained a “basic weather watch” which meant that we didn’t stare outside all day long, but maintained an awareness of what was happening outside between scheduled observation times.

One night I was listening to a local radio station and sometime a little after 3:00 AM the radio guy says he just got a call from the airport and it’s snowing. I glanced outside and sure enough it was snowing ever so lightly. In fact, it was so light it didn’t affect the ceiling or visibility enough to require a special observation so I didn’t really do anything.

But as the hour wore on it bugged me and finally I called the radio station to let them know that whoever called in about the snow was correct… but it wasn’t me unless I was doing stuff in my sleep.

When the announcer came back on the air he corrected his earlier report and said the call must have come from a regular at an all-night diner because he’d gotten a call from the airport where the guy said he’d been sleeping!

Thank God it was 4:00 in the morning!

Helicopter damage
The Air Force ran some kind of dispersal exercise one summer. Jamestown is 150 miles southwest of Grand Forks Air Force Base and was one of the designated dispersal fields so they brought a tanker of jet fuel and a helicopter to our airport. They also brought a lot of people and I heard they “took over” an entire motel in town. The joke was that if they ever have to actually activate the plan it better not be on a weekend during basketball season, because there probably wouldn’t be any rooms. Anyway, for the two or three nights of the exercise we had a couple of Air Police hanging out at the Flight Service “guarding” the helicopter. Mostly they just played cards and sometimes we visited a little.

The night I worked during the exercise we had a nasty line of thunderstorms moving eastward across the state. During the evening shift my co-worker had called the Air Force base ops to alert them to the weather so they could see about getting the helo in a hanger or otherwise protect it. He was told that they couldn’t get hanger space and since they didn’t like to fly at night they’d take their chances. No action was taken and the guards just played cards all night.

The storms moved through on my shift and the worst cells passed south of us so there was no problem.

About 6:30 AM I got a call from an officer at the airbase wanting to know how badly their “…helicopter had been damaged…” during the night. Apparently, the message that got delivered was more of a report of what had happened rather than a warning about what could happen.

Winter weather
Winter weather can be brutal in the Dakotas. I never got snowed in at Jamestown but one night when it was snowing and blowing, I was tested.

The instrument shelter with thermometers was 30 or 40 feet from the building and on this particular night a snowdrift formed between the facility and the instrument shelter. The first observation after midnight I dug a path through the drift with a snow shovel and got my readings, but by the next hour the drift was more than knee high. Maintenance kept a snow blower in their shop so I fired it up and “blew” a path through the drift to get my temperatures.

The next hour the path I’d cut was filled in and the drift was nearly waist high, so I fired up the snow blower again. And so, it went all night; every hour I’d start up the snow blower and cut a path to the instrument shelter. By the time things started letting up the drift was more than four feet high.

The buried runway lights
Relationships on airports could be tricky at times and they were a little different at each place I worked. In Jamestown, for some reason, it seemed they were sometimes a little testy. The airport manager also ran the FBO (Fixed Base Operation) and he really didn’t care much about his airport obligations when he had other business to attend to. One evening during the winter of 1978-79 the snow had been blowing and drifting quite a bit and the Northwest Airlines station manager came in to ask that I call the airport manager and advise him that their afternoon flight had reported that about half of the runway lights were buried in the snow.

The aircraft had given me the same report and I’d already passed the information to the manager but he’d taken no action. So, thinking that the airline request might carry some weight I called the guy again. He pretty much told me he’d looked at them and they were fine. The response of the Northwest manager was that unless the lights were cleared they would cancel their flight that night and so I called the airport manager again. He told me it was his airport and he would give us condition reports.

Within 30 minutes I got a call from a member of the airport board asking what was going on. Apparently, the Northwest agent had called the board member. I reported the sequence of events up to that point and perhaps 30 minutes after that the airport manager called me on the radio advising that he would be on the runway clearing the lights. He was quite obscene and every time he moved the pickup to a new set of lights he called on the radio and told me what a son-of-a-bitch I was.

A couple of months later the city hired a full-time airport manager and the relationship among airport tenants improved considerably.

The rain storm
One night I was going into work at midnight but because my wife and daughter were gone somewhere I needed to drop my son off at a co-worker’s home for the night. Because of the extra stop I planned on leaving home a little early. As we left the house about 10:45 that night it was just starting to rain lightly.
By the time I’d driven across town it was pouring and as I started up the hill to the guy’s house the water was running down the sides if the street almost to the level of the curbs. I ran Kevin into the house and got him settled and went back to my car. The rain hadn’t let up a bit.

I got to the airport around 11:30pm, the intensity of the rain hadn’t decreased, and the specialist on duty was swamped. One of the ironies we encountered was that when adverse weather was occurring and we needed to take special observations or be particularly vigilant we’d get a rash of calls (mostly from people who were just curious) to ask what was going on. Since he was so busy I offered to get his weather observation started and, although we normally wouldn’t measure the precipitation until the observation at 1:00 AM I decided to see how much rain we’d gotten. I was stunned when I measured the water in the rain gauge and found that we’d had nearly 2¾ inches in just about exactly one hour.

While the on-duty specialist finished the observation, I called the forecast office and reported the quantity of rain and a few minutes later they issued a flash flood warning. There was some flooding – I know the railroad underpass in town was completely full of water and some creeks overflowed but don’t think there was a lot of property damage.

The rain quit shortly after midnight and when I checked the rain gauge for the 1:00 AM observation there was only one or two tenths to add to the measurement I’d taken prior to midnight.

Fake weather observations
This story is about a situation in Jamestown, but has roots back to about 1976 when I was in Miles City and first I’ll need to explain the equipment we used.

We had two teletype circuits in the facility, one for the transmission and receipt of weather and the other for flight movement and administrative messages. To send a message we typed it on one of the teletypes which simultaneously generated a paper tape with holes punched in it. Each character on the keyboard was represented by a different combination of holes punched in the tape. This tape was then placed in a Transmitting Device (TD) and when our station’s signal was received the TD would automatically start and read the tape as it was pulled through the device and would send it out the circuit.

These systems ran at 100 words per minute and the weather teletype ran almost constantly. After we took a weather observation we had to “cut” a tape and have it in the TD by 59 minutes after the hour. There were about 10 stations on each circuit and they were always polled in sequence. At the top of the hour the 10 weather reports for our circuit would be printed. Following this the weather for the state would be printed and then each surrounding state and states further away were printed. At 20 minutes and 40 minutes into the hour the TDs on the circuit would be scanned in case there were any changes in the weather. After all the current weather was received the rest of the hour we would receive forecasts, winds aloft or other weather information.

One night when I went into work at Miles City the specialist I was relieving pointed out an anomaly on the weather report for Jamestown. Instead of a weather report there was a flight movement message. I suggested that observer must have put the wrong tape in the TD by mistake. The guy I was relieving laughed and showed me that the hour before the very same flight movement message had been sent. The only explanation was that the specialist in Jamestown had put the same tape in the TD both times.

Weeks later I happened to be talking with a specialist in Minot FSS and mentioned what we’d seen coming out of Jamestown. The guy in Minot said, “Yeah, that was my brother.”

When I transferred to Jamestown I met the guy and it was obvious what he was doing – when he was working at night he’d fill out the weather reports for the full shift and would cut one tape which he’d put in the TD each hour in time for the transmit signal. This only worked because we did not encode the observation time on each report.

Not long after I got to Jamestown the format for weather reports changed and the time of the observation was now required at the beginning of each report. We all figured that would solve the problem of what the guy was doing because each report had to have a unique, and appropriate, time. Surprisingly this didn’t deter him as he would type all the reports at the beginning of his shift and then put them in the TD in order. I’m not sure what happened to the guy, I know management and the weather service were aware of what he was doing, but I wasn’t in Jamestown long enough to know whether he ever changed his ways or not.

AIRCRAFT LOST, CONFUSED, IN DISTRESS OR WHAT?

Oops
Northwest Airlines was flying B727s through Jamestown when I started working there. There were two runways, 12-30 and 04-22 (which is basically shaped as an X) but only runway 12-30 was constructed to handle the weight of a B727. Also, the only taxiway that the aircraft could use was from the intersection of the two runways to the ramp. Our standard policy was to broadcast a reminder for the pilots to not turn off the runway but to taxi back down the runway to the intersection then to the ramp.

A few months after I got to Jamestown Northwest had a strike and didn’t operate for most of the summer. It was late fall when they finally started up again and I was working when the first aircraft arrived. After such a long absence I forgot about the warning transmission and thought of it just as the aircraft started to turn onto the taxiway at the end of the runway. Before I could even make a call, the pilot was on the radio saying, “I shouldn’t be here should I?”

The airport manager had also seen what happened and called immediately to advise that, because the ground was frozen hard, there was no problem and the airliner could safely use the parallel taxiway. Whew!

ACCIDENTS AND INCIDENTS

Fire
A mail plane came through Jamestown every night enroute from Fargo, ND to Bismarck, ND and return during the midnight shift. They used Beach 18 aircraft that had seen better days. Their radios were so bad that when you heard some kind of scratchy squelch break at about the right time of night we just automatically gave them an airport advisory.

One night the plane had taxied away from the ramp, copied their clearance and was doing a run-up at the runway/taxiway junction when I glanced out the window to see the entire right wing on fire. I grabbed the mike and called the aircraft with the message.

The pilot’s response was, “Aw, not again”! He then revved up the engine, blew the fire out, and took off.

Mail Plane crash
During the first summer I was in Jamestown we lost a mail plane. I wasn’t working that night so don’t know the precise details of the event but by all accounts, the contacts with the flight were all perfectly routine. The aircraft was the same type as described in the previous story but with a different pilot. Some of the circumstances were eerily similar to what had happened in Miles City. The pilot was on his last leg of the night, departing Jamestown for his home base in Fargo. The flight was cleared to Fargo and after departure the controller didn’t expect to talk to the pilot until he arrived at Fargo. The flight was assigned a cruise clearance at or below an altitude where he would be in radar coverage. Consequently, the aircraft wasn’t missed until he failed to make contact at his destination.

Once again, I know a few things that were reported about the accident but have no idea what the actual findings of the investigation uncovered. The aircraft flew into some abandoned farm buildings about 8 or 9 miles east of the airport and, although it caused a power outage, the wreckage wasn’t located until after the aircraft was determined to be overdue. We were told the aircraft engines seemed to be operating and at normal power settings so it was a mystery why the pilot was flying so low.

You Just Never Know
I came on duty one night at midnight and in the shift turnover I was advised that the evening shift specialist had briefed a pilot and activated an “assumed departure” flight plan for a pilot flying from Wahpeton (located on the Minnesota state line in southeast North Dakota) to Bismarck (about 100 miles west of Jamestown). The weather in Jamestown (and to the west of us) was great – clear with unrestricted visibility but there was widespread IFR over the east edge of the both Dakotas and all of Minnesota due to low stratus cloud layer. I was told that the pilot was going to confirm his departure time and give me a pilot report when he passed south of Jamestown.

The first radio contact I had after taking over the shift was an aircraft eastbound to Minneapolis. I advise that VFR flight was not recommended due the IFR conditions being report to the east. I advised the eastbound pilot that I expected a pilot report about conditions to the south of Fargo and he elected to land a Jamestown and wait for the report.

I believe there were 4 guys who came into the facility. Shortly after they arrived I received the call from the westbound pilot. He verified his departure time and reported that ceilings around Wahpeton were well below 1000’, told me where the west edge of the clouds were and said he wouldn’t recommend anyone trying to fly VFR in that area. I gave the pilot the latest Bismarck weather and went back to my other duties. The group of guys from the eastbound aircraft, after hearing that report, asked to use a phone, called a cab and left for a hotel a short time later.

A couple of hours later I got a teletype message from Minot FSS requesting flight plan information regarding the westbound aircraft because he hadn’t cancelled his flight plan at Bismarck. This was somewhat routine – pilots often forgot to cancel and we just needed to locate the aircraft. The situation was somewhat complicated because the tower at Bismarck was closed at that time of the morning and as there was no one on the field. Minot FSS had to request that law enforcement personnel check the airport.

An hour later I received a further request for information on the aircraft which was now considered overdue. I still wasn’t particularly concerned because I envisioned the difficulties they were having getting someone to conduct an airport search and there was a good chance the plane was in a hanger. We got into the beginning stages of search and rescue several times every year and usually found the aircraft within an hour or two. Never-the-less at this point procedures required that I start calling other airports along the aircraft route of flight to see if the aircraft might have landed somewhere other than the destination. This put me in the position of having to call sheriffs in each county along the route of flight from where I’d talked to the aircraft to the boundary of our flight plan area. These are small, rural counties and I was literally calling these guys at home waking them up. Most of them weren’t too happy with the 3 AM calls and only one was at all cordial. He even offered to check an airport in the next county because it was relatively close to him.

All of my airport checks came back negative and although the aircraft couldn’t be found at Bismarck I figured it was there somewhere – probably in a hanger. At any rate the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) was alerted and about 7:30 I got a call from them asking about my radio contact with the pilot – what he said, how he sounded, was he fatigued, etc. The officer I spoke to said they would be launching shortly to begin the search.

On the drive home 30 minutes later, the radio news was reporting on the overdue aircraft and said the CAP had been out searching “since first light” for the aircraft.

That evening on the news the Bismarck TV station had a report on the aircraft accident. The CAP had flown the reciprocal of the guy’s route and found the aircraft wreckage almost immediately. The TV station even had video from the scene of the accident. In the pictures they showed tire tracks in the prairie grass (from the landing gear) on the side of a gently sloping hill. Then the camera panned following the tracks in the grass to wreckage against a pile rocks at the top of the hill.

Sometime later, visiting with an FAA investigator I was shown the pilot’s sectional chart with his route from Wahpeton to Bismarck drawn in pencil with a circle around the topographic feature of the hill he landed/crashed on. He knew this was the highest terrain along his route but apparently after leaving Wahpeton with the low ceilings he’d never climbed to any significant altitude and literally flew into the ground as the rising terrain came up to meet him.

The passenger was killed in the accident but the pilot survived and I heard that he stated that he didn’t know what happened. I was told that in his statement he said he looked over to say something to his passenger and the next thing he knew they were rolling along on the ground.