Flight ceiling would be lowered from 2,800 feet to 500 feet

David Guernsey calls it the “startle factor,” the moment when the quiet of rural Maine explodes with the sound of a jet screaming overhead.

The jolt can raise the hair on the back of your neck or send a shiver through your body.

It might soon be happening more often.

In the sky above Western Maine – in territories known to flyers as Condor 1 and Condor 2 – military pilots have trained for decades. Fighter and attack pilots from bases as far away as Cape Cod and northern Vermont have used the airspace to practice maneuvers and engage in pretend dogfights.

However, rules have always kept the sparring well into the sky, no lower than 2,800 feet in most areas.

An effort led by the officers from Otis Air National Guard in Falmouth, Mass., aims to lower the floor to 500 feet, making the startle moments far more common on the ground, which stretches across most of Oxford and Franklin counties.

Proponents say the noise won’t increase and that fewer flights will be dispersed across a wider area.

Guernsey, who lives in Kingfield, doesn’t believe it.

“It’s really going to change the quality of life around here,” he said.

He worries that the noise will disrupt the quiet lives of people in this vast area, covering nearly 5,000 square miles. He worries that planes might chase away tourists and hurt the local economy.

As a pilot – Guernsey owns and operates a seaplane – he worries that the jets will chase other planes out of the sky.

“I hate to say, ‘They can put it someplace else,'” he said.

But maybe they should, he added.

How loud?

The proposal would allow jets to fly low across an area larger than Rhode Island.

Beginning in Greenville, the military operational area stretches southwest to Sumner before turning north to Bethel. The boundary then runs northwest, skirting the edge of New Hampshire’s Coos County. The northern edge runs along the Canadian border before turning east again.

Jet pilots would be required to avoid towns and other populated areas, according to a 139-page report placed on file at local libraries.

Pilots also would have to avoid eagle nests from February to August.

And the noise?

The environmental report compares the noise of a jet passing at 500 feet to a household vacuum cleaner, a passing car or a living-room stereo.

The report, compiled for leaders at Otis Air National Guard Base, also claims the noise is less than some common sounds.

A passing motorcycle would be four times as loud. An ambulance siren would be eight times as loud.

The report claims only a “minor increase” in noise levels across most of the area and a drop in some areas.

“One misconception is that there is a lot more noise down low,” said Lt. Col. Steve Lambrecht, the chief of standardization and evaluation for the 158th Fighter Wing in Burlington, Vt. His pilots, who fly F-16 “Fighting Falcons,” commonly train in the Maine airspace.

He believes the change may actually make the flights less annoying.

The Maine airspace already has three paths that pilots use for flights as low as 500 feet. If the proposal is adopted, those narrow paths would be abandoned since the whole area would allow such flights.

“It spreads the noise over a much, much greater area,” Lambrecht said.

Training space needed

The low-flight plan has been brewing for four years among Cape Cod’s F-15 “Eagle” pilots.

The specialized training space is desperately needed, said Capt. Monty Beckel, the Otis pilot who spearheaded the proposal.

“For us, it almost becomes a safety issue,” he said.

The mission of his unit, the 102nd Fighter Wing, is air-to-air combat. That includes dogfighting and the use, or evasion of, aerial weapons. Most of the unit’s training is done over the North Atlantic. However, every pilot is required to complete low-altitude training over a changing terrain, something that cannot be done over the ocean.

The planes typically travel at 350 to 450 mph, making the low-altitude pathways too narrow for fighters to maneuver as they need, Beckel said.

“You can’t turn around in them,” he said. The planes need an area of at least 360 square miles, no less than 60 miles across, to train in, according to the report.

In some cases, the lack of room has forced pilots in the unit to lose qualifications, preventing them from missions.

That shouldn’t happen, Beckel said. His unit was the first above Manhattan following the 9/11 attacks. It may be called to Iraq.

Like any arm of the U.S. military, the unit needs to be ready for war.

Lambrecht, too, worries about the ability of his pilots to complete training.

“We need to be current and proficient,” he said. “It can be very challenging, especially in the wintertime (when flights are often canceled due to poor weather).”

Both Beckel and Lambrecht insisted that the number of flights would not increase, only the nature of them would change.

The F-15 flyers from Cape Cod use the area once or twice a week, Beckel said. Lambrecht estimated that F-16s from Burlington fly in the region about twice a week, with groups of four to six jets each time.

To meet the training requirements, Beckel and his colleagues tried first to check on areas outside the region. However, they learned that the cost of deploying to another base to renew qualifications was prohibitively expensive, about $200,000 each time.

Then, they checked on opening new military airspace, perhaps over a more remote part of Maine. That didn’t work, either. It conflicted with established flight routes.

Finally, they settled on changing Condors 1 and 2.

“It was the most viable alternative we had,” Beckel said.

He knew history would be a problem, though.

Plan failed before

A similar change was tried in the early 1990s. It failed.

“The region fought it hard and won,” said Evelyn McAllister, executive director of the Rangeley Lakes Chamber of Commerce.

Public hearings drew scores of angry people, worried that low-flying planes would spoil their quiet homes or their businesses, many dependent on the growing tourist industry.

Back then, the Burlington base led the initiative, which called for a floor of only 300 feet.

The issue drew front-page headlines. Residents argued that pilots already broke the rules, flying so close to treetops that branches were blown by the wakes.

Beckel believes that if the plan is implemented, there will be little notice to area people. Part of that will come from the closure of Brunswick Naval Air Station, scheduled to begin at the end of next year.

However, BNAS planes have little impact there, said John James, public affairs director at the Brunswick base.

He agreed with the report’s numbers that 144 flights from Brunswick were flown over the area last year, an average of 2.7 each week.

However, the base’s propeller-driven P-3 “Orions” create only a fraction of the noise of jets and rarely fly below 10,000 feet in that area, he said.

Such discussions are likely to take center stage when public meetings begin.

Proponents plan to schedule a series of meetings, though none has been announced.

Meanwhile, Otis Air National Guard base is taking comments on its report until April 13. The FAA is also gathering comments through May 3.

Sharing the sky

Few people know the effort is under way.

The leaders of several local groups were unaware of the initiative. Meanwhile, the Western Mountains Alliance, which led the fight last time, might be listening to the discussion, but it will not be taking a stance.

“We don’t do that sort of thing any more,” Executive Director Tanya Swain said.

Word of the proposed change was first reported by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, which posted a notice on its Web site.

Since then, pilots from Maine have been e-mailing and calling the organization’s hotline, asking it to complain to the FAA, which will make the final decision on whether to approve the lower altitude.

“We will be submitting formal comments,” said Kathleen Vasconcelos, spokeswoman for the pilot’s association.

Her organization worries that the lower flights will interfere with traffic at 20 airports, both inside and outside the military flight area.

Guernsey, who learned of the proposal from the private pilot’s group, shares the concern.

The system is supposed to prevent collisions.

Air traffic control in Boston and Portland monitor military aircraft in the region. Controllers recommend that private pilots who fly in Condor call in to find out whether military planes are in the area.

Meanwhile, modern fighters, including the F-15s and F-16s, are equipped with radar and mapping computer screens similar to some cars On-Star systems. The map moves with the aircraft, highlights nearby planes and towns and, as planned, eagles’ nests.

But Guernsey worries that the system has gaps.

He once had an encounter of his own.

Guernsey was piloting his seaplane, taking off from a lake near Carrabassett Valley, when two fighters appeared above him.

They seemed to come out of nowhere, he said. Then, they disappeared.

“You wondered if they saw you or not,” he said.

It also left him wondering if the jets can share the sky with anyone.