The City of Plymouth is proud to announce the Plymouth Municipal Airport is now home to an operational AWOS III Weather Station. AWOS stands for Automated Weather Observing System. Since July 2010 it has been a top priority of the Plymouth Aviation Board to reach this goal. After two failed funding requests to the FAA and one failed request to state government, the money was reallocated by the City/Aviation Board from a different aviation project in 2016.
In February 2016, the project was put out for bid and Michiana Contract was awarded the contract. Michiana Contracting has installed 35 AWOS III Weather Stations across Indiana, Ohio and Illinois. The equipment was received in early November 2016 and the project began in December. Installation was completed and the programming of the equipment was completed on February 14, 2017. The unit is currently operational in a test mode and information from the unit is available by telephone only at this time.
Once the unit successfully passes through the test mode time frame, the information will be available via aviation radio, the internet and telephone. The Weather Station will provide numerous different pieces of information; temperature, dew point, barometric pressure, wind direction, wind velocity, bottom of cloud height, top of cloud height and precipitation. The information will be available to the flying public, pilots flying under instrument conditions, and pilots flying into the Plymouth Municipal Airport will now have access to the weather conditions. By being able to access weather conditions from the Plymouth Airport rather than from the South Bend airport, pilots will be able to increase their landing decision height.
Plymouth Aviation Board Member Tom Flynn is “thrilled to have this addition to the Plymouth Municipal Airport. It has taken us over 6 years to make this project a reality, with no help from the FAA.” Airport Manager, Dave Lattimer said “we are so pleased to be able to offer this important service. Having our own AWOS III Weather Station will add to the safety of the planes flying into the airport.”
The cost of this project was $149,875.
Article and news release provided.
