Episode 69: The 4th Quarter Money Blueprint: End the Year Strong

[music] Good evening and welcome to this week's episode of Atlantic Tales. When we'll hear about AirNav Ireland's North Atlantic Communications Center at Betty Green County Claire, the Celebrates East 90th Anniversary. [music] AirNav Ireland is a commercial semi-state company which undertakes the AirNavigation Service Provider functions previously managed by the Irish Aviation Authority. The company provides air traffic management services in the 451,000 square kilometers of airspace controlled by Ireland and which forms a crucial gateway for air traffic between Europe and North America. AirNav Ireland's North Atlantic Communications Center is situated in the County Claire countryside at Valley Green. It's here that our journey today begins. [music] Since 1936, an unassuming building in the Claire countryside has been at the center of ensuring the safe passage of millions of aircraft crossing the North Atlantic. Operating beyond the reach of traditional radar and VHF radio coverage, VCenter at Valley Green uses high-frequency shortwave radio to connect with aircraft crossing the Atlantic. A section of the foined flying boat and maritime museum has been set aside to house an exhibition dedicated to the great work that has been done at Valley Green over the past nine decades. Own Green is Deputy Operations Manager at AirNav Ireland, North Atlantic Communications Center at Valley Green. Valley Green is the North Atlantic Communications Center and we are the link between pilots and air traffic control and press week. We provide vital communications via HF frequency. So if the pilots have position reports where to information or any vital information, they will pass it to radio officers in Valley Green and we then in turn will pass that to air traffic control and press week. On the other hand, if air traffic control and press week have messages, maybe level clearances or speed reductions or some vital information that they need to pass to the pilots, they will come through radio officers in Valley Green and we in turn will pass that to the pilots. Does enter at Valley Green set up in that location strategically because press week couldn't reach as far as Valley Green dulls? You do a very important job from that perspective. Yeah, so VHF frequency and radar is line of sight. Basically, HF can skip the globe. HF can work flights as far as gander. We often, actually, sometimes we get interference from Mumbai in India. So HF is vital for communications on an artillery. People might realize either how many aircraft you deal with every year but on a given day, the number is quite staggering. On average, on a given day, we would work 1,800 to 1,900 flights. On a very busy summer day, we're getting close to 2,000 flights now. There are certain periods. The East Bend flow is extremely busy, the West Bend flow is extremely busy. We also deal with traffic going down towards Madrid and towards the Canary Islands, especially in summer periods. It's on school holidays. That traffic is extremely busy. And we also have flights that are coming in and out of Iceland as well. So there's never really a lowland traffic to be quite honest. It's always constantly busy. We just have different levels of busyness. When you're talking to pilots coming east or going west, what kind of information are they asking you for? Yeah, so the pilots would call in with, let's say, if they're going westbound, they would call in at the boundary. And we will forward them on. We will give them the frequencies that they need for the next sector which will be gander or Iceland or Santa Maria. We'll also give them what's called a cell call check so that we can contact them more easily if needs be. Without calling on the frequency, it's a tone that sends out that is just for that aircraft. Information-wise, depending on the equipment on the aircraft, we could be taking position reports. We could be given weather information if there's turbulence or some sort of weather phenomena ahead. We also give amended level clearances if the aircraft needs to climb, amended route clearances, if the aircraft need to change their route due to traffic or due to the business of a certain route. Santa Maria, sigma number one, valid until 17200. In Bali Green, in the North Atlantic Communications Center, we have a volmet as well. It has a sigma, which is a significant information to pilots. So if an aircraft gets airborne, let's say, out of Rome, before it gets to the North Atlantic, the weather could have changed significantly. It might be severe turbulence, there could be some sort of weather phenomena out in the North Atlantic, which the crews might have. So we're there, we can provide that information as well to the aircraft. Are there ever any black spots in the North Atlantic? Can you reach all aircraft all the time? With HF, although HF has been around since 1936, and modern technologies have come in and some of them are great, but HF has been a constant. It's resilient, and we always get our flights on HF. If there's some sort of space weather phenomena, we always manage to get the aircraft on what might be different frequencies, but we always do manage to get them. So yeah, it is a constant, and as you said, it's a vital part of the North Atlantic Communications. For someone who hasn't had the privilege of stepping into the building at Bali Green, what would they see in there? Yes, in Bali Green, we have an operations room like many other traffic control centers. So we have 12 positions in that aircraft room that are dedicated to radio officers. We have a coordinate and radio officer position, and we also have a watch manager position. So all these positions have tree screens in front of them. One is a voice communication system. One is a flight data system, and the other is an IDS, which an information display system that shows the various frequencies that are active for that day. As I said, there's 12 different positions, 12 different desks. It's likely dark because it is an operations room, and that is required for there's lights, though, but that is required for the work that's on screens and anti-glairs, I suppose. It takes a particular type of person to be able to do this job. There's no question about that. Yeah, one of the observations that I've made myself as a unit trainer manager seem to think that you need a background in aviation. You actually don't. What you need is you need attention to detail. You need clear communications. You need to be able to work well within a team and the ability to learn. I'd highly recommend it as a career. It's a very rewarding career. How extensive is the training? Yeah, so the training is highly structured now and competency-based. There's three main phases of the training. Training for classroom, second will be practical, and then toward on the job training. So the classroom section students will learn the fundamentals of aviation. They learn about the North Atlantic operations, phaseology, and what systems they're going to use as a radio officer. Moving on to the practical stage, that's more a simulator. So they will run exercises to build up their confidence and their accuracy and typing and clear communications that takes over a period of from the classroom stage to practical stage is roughly five months. So by the time they're finished, they're similar on the practical stage. They're ready to go on to operations, on to live operations, on the job training. So the on the job training, they're then put with an on the job training instructor. Who they sit with and they work for approximately four months with that person. There will be a changeover, there will be two or three instructors. And they work with that person and again it's about gaining confidence, knowledge, awareness of the job. And hopefully at the end of that, they do an assessment and they check out and become a qualified radio officer. When and where did your own career in aviation communications start? So I actually joined Irish Aviation Authority was back then in 2000. As a flight data assistant, I worked in the training school in Dublin for approximately two years. Then moved on to operations and worked as a flight data controller there. I worked in Dublin terror, worked in the center in Dublin. I've seen the opportunity came up to become a radio officer in 2016. In Balli Green in North Atlantic Communication Center, I applied, I was successful, I done my training. I was an aeronautical radio officer for, I'd say approximately five to six years. I then got promoted to watch manager. and then we'll see you guys later. on to uni-trainer manager and read more recently to deputy operations manager. Working in the tower in Dublin, the busiest tower in Ireland, going from there to Bally Green. Is that a huge, different, huge transition? Yeah, it was different, but for me, the knowledge that I had gained in working in air traffic control in Dublin really benefited me because I could transfer that knowledge to the radio officer position. So that did benefit me, but I had spent a lot of time in air traffic control. So for me, it was a good transfer over. And what comes at the triple-author requesting elbow? Air traffic on 1-1-1. It's on our radio. It's on our way. And it's on the next area of the summit. We're at the CTDL CF-2, and we're getting to the other two boards. That's probably 12-6-7-2. And I was 8-8-7-9-1. And it's a 3-0-1 call at Dander-A-0. And I ran 8-8-6-3-1. That can be 1-1-2-7-9-1. Connor Quinn is head of operations at the North Atlantic Communication Center at Balli Green. He lived under the flight path into Dublin Airport, and in school was caught more than once, staring out the window at airplanes flying overhead. A teacher once told him that no one would pay him to watch airplanes all day. Aviation, however, is in his family's blood, and Connor always had his eyesight unfollowing in their footsteps. After school, Connor began training as an aircraft mechanic, and spent some time in Shannon and had strong connections in County Claire. The company he worked for was wound down during the recession, but Connor was determined to remain in aviation. Around the same time, the Irish Aviation Authority was looking for aeronautical radio officers, and so the next chapter in his career began. Both my parents worked for a linguist, my sister's a pilot. I had never heard of what an aeronautical radio officer was until I saw the ad in the paper. So I applied, and I was lucky to be taken on by a aeronaut of Ireland in the Irish Aviation Authority as we were at the time in 2009. I did my training for the guts of a year, and then was out on the floor as a radio officer for a number of years. And then they advertised for a watch manager or a shift supervisor position. I was forced off to get that, and then they advertised for the operations manager role, and I was fortunate enough to get that. And then recently I was uplifted again to the head of the unit. So that's been the last 16, 17 years of my career in a nutshell. And getting paid for watching planes? Getting paid for watching planes, exactly. What if the aviation had a blood cell in the family? Yes, 100% yeah, always, actually my great-grandfather, his family farm, was in Reneina, and they had to leave to build the airport back in the day. So my dad grew up in Quinn, and he was always familiar with the airport then. So that's probably where he got into aviation from as well. Your climb up the ladder seemed to have been quite quick. 15 or 16 years of thereabouts. Yes, well I suppose it better be more lucky than God, isn't that what they say? Yeah, no, it worked out. I think maybe part of it is just my interest in aviation overall. I have good knowledge whenever I meet the customers. And I get sent to various international meetings to represent the company. And I have an idea of what's going on and how to help our customers out and satisfy their needs. Customers are an important word there because Reneve Island is a commercial venture. You have to be paid for the services you provide. Correct, we take no money from the state, we earn all our money from aircraft charges, which we levitate on the aircraft for providing them the service, and we actually pay a dividend to the state every year as well. So the government makes money off of us. Aviation is totally unpredictable like the weather, and you would have days in Bali, Greenham shore, which is just runner the mill, but no two days probably the same. There's always something interesting out there whether it's interesting weather, or whether there's a technical failure. So for example, you might have seen in the last couple of months, there were some issues with UK airspace because a lot of rivers. So we were actually quite busy on the ocean in those days because for example flights that would normally go from Rome to Dublin would go, you know, Italy, France, UK, Ireland. We're coming out over Spain and then rooting north onto the ocean to get into Ireland that way. So we are a vital gateway for Europe, even when there are other issues further into the European network. One of the busiest times that air in Ireland are the IAA as you were at the time, 9/11, going back to 2001. That was particularly unpredictable. It was never happening. It was dealt with very well, but that was totally out of the ordinary. So there were procedures in place for aircraft contingencies where if an airplane had an emergency and needed to turn back immediately, they could do so they could deviate off their cleared route and descend or climb by 500 feet and then turn around. Because then they'd be 500 feet above or below any other traffic they were safe. It had never been envisaged that every aircraft would have to do that at the same time. So again, it's before my time, but speaking to some of the guys who were on duty on the day, they were aware of what was going on in the news, the same way that all of us were. And then the first indication they got that something was happening in US Airspace was all the US military traffic started requesting to divert to the likes of Iceland, Ireland, Newfoundland, etc. And about 15 minutes later, all civilian traffic then started doing the same as the word went out that US Airspace or at least Airspace west of Newfoundland was closed. So you either landed in Newfoundland or you turned around and tried to get back to Europe, whether it be your origin airport or if you didn't have enough fuel, you'd land in the likes of Shannon or Dublin, etc. So it was extremely busy. I know that all our staff who were on days off were ringing in and asking what they come in and help out and open up more frequencies and help with the capacity and they all did. So a lot of our colleagues who came in on their days off for extra breaks, open extra frequencies to man phones, whatever, because it was an unimaginable situation at the time, but it was handled very, very safely, thankfully. Being prepared for that, you were in 2001, you still have to be today. It might never happen again, but if you're ready. Correct, yes, we have backups to backups to backups and various contingency procedures. We're a very resilient operation. We actually have a full link with our colleagues in Iceland now so we can seamlessly take over from one another if there ever was a failure of some kind. For example, you might recall in recent years they had a lot of volcanic activity in Iceland and one of their transmitter sites was badly damaged by seismic activity. So whilst they were moving all that equipment to another part of the country, they were using our infrastructure to provide our traffic services in their airspace. So there is a lot of safety and a lot of resilience in the operation today. That just shows as well that there is so much going on behind the scenes in terms of infrastructure. You'll reach the number of aircraft you deal with every day. We don't see happen in the gull of the cloud cover, but you'll see the contrails of otherwise. It's the busiest ocean in the world and we are the busiest oceanic communications facility in the world. As you said, very busy, but on an average day, 95% of traffic between Europe and North America passes through all your share space. So it is a huge revenue driver and a huge job provider for the region. On an ongoing basis and 1911 was a particularly strange event in terms of dealing with aircraft that you wouldn't be scheduled to deal with. But Shannon Airport's location, Lungus runway in Ireland, means that it's a location for diverting aircraft on a regular basis. So you're dealing with emergencies as well? Yes, on a weekly basis, at least we'll see aircraft diverging to Shannon Airport. The most common cause is a medical emergency, unfortunately affecting a passenger on board. But yeah, Shannon is a vital international diversion airport for the North Atlantic. It's probably one of the big four is Keflavik Gander and Lages in the Azores. The big four you would see aircraft diverting to when they have an issue nowadays. You have to have special training to deal with that because there are procedures. If it's medical, if it's technical, mechanical, probably more serious in terms of getting a plane on the ground quickly. Oh, 100%. Yes, you're trained to handle emergencies promptly as quickly as possible. It's all second nature, really. The training is so thorough and so reoccurring that you don't really miss a beat if a flight does declare a Mayday or a pan pan with you. You're kept on your feet, so at a controller and a new controller are aeronautical radio officers coming in to the operation. They realize it's going to be a busy job. It is, of course, it's a busy job and one of the big benefits certainly, and I experienced as well when I started, is you've got experienced colleagues all around you and there's never any issue with asking a question. You've always got a coordinator or the radio officers watch manager who you can put your hand in and say, "What do I do here?" And you'll always get the right answer in the room. Curious what aviation you love that growing up within your blood then because you're a family. But you've been hearing the stories from people who have now retired or moved on. Yes, so back in the day, it was all glass valves and diodes and things like that. And when it started, it was Morse code and navigation, radio, ADF, aeronautical direction finding. So the aircraft will pick up a signal and there'd be an arrow pointing where the signal's coming from and that's how you knew, "Oh, I'm going to Shannon or I'm going to Gander or wherever." So again, which we said Morse code, it would have been a radio operator in the flight deck on the flying boat in the earlier land-based planes. So as we said, flying boats from foins and botwood and then onto New York. And then land planes first DC-4, I believe was 1946 landing in Shannon Airport. And then the fuel stops required for the likes of the 707, early 747s, etc. And then we move on to the longer range aircraft we have today. But Shannon has, and the Shannon region has been a vital link in global aviation as well as North Atlantic aviation for sure. Ben, agree with that. when the flying boats were still coming into Shannon Airport Flains, as it was called, before they built the Land Airport. That gives some perspective on how long you've been there. Even before Shannon was built. Correct. And if you even think about what it must have been like back in the day when these wooden huts were built in 1936 in Valley Green before rural electrification or running water or things like that, how space age this technology must have seemed at the time. And of course, we've updated it time and time again as new technologies come on stream, you know, satellite communications and aircraft tracking and things like that. But we've moved at the times and it's a great operation to be part. Coming up, we'll hear how the history of Valley Green is deeply rooted in local family traditions and seafaring heritage, with many early radio officers transitioning from careers in the merchant navy. Welcome back to Atlantic Tales. AirNav Ireland's North Atlantic communication center is situated in the County Clare countryside at Valley Green near Dremoland. Operating beyond the reach of traditional radar and VHF radio coverage, the center utilizes high frequency shortwave radio to connect with aircraft crossing via Atlantic. By bouncing radio waves off the ionosphere, Valley Green's team overcomes the curvature of the Earth to essentially maintain constant contact with pilots over the ocean. Today, approximately 70 personnel, including more than 50 radio officers supported by technical, engineering and administrative staff manage air ground communications across the Shanwick Oceanic control area. Tim O'Mahoney is a retired engineer and aeronautical radio officer at Valley Green. My very first memory of Valley Green, which is funny. I had a shortwave radio, an old valve radio, and I used to tune across the shortwave town again, I suppose for something to do. And one day I did actually hear a voice saying, "This is Shannon Air Radio." And the funny thing is, when I went to Valley Green, I actually recognized that voice, and it was Alphyshine, and that was a long time ago. Now, I didn't know about Valley Green at that stage. I didn't know where it was. I just heard "This is Shannon Air Radio." That became very familiar to me when I actually went to Valley Green, because on the volumet, when you were broadcasting the weather for all these European airports, you always said, "This is Shannon Air Radio." And you do a segment of five minutes, where you do the weather broadcast for particular airports. And then you'd say, again, while you're waiting for the next five minutes, you'd say, "This is Shannon Air Radio." So you were doing the volumet the weather updated by you in those days? Yeah, yeah. Now it's all automated. But of course, you didn't only do the weather. That would take maybe 25 minutes to do the weather for a broadcast, and there would be a five-minute gap, and then somebody else would come along and take the next 25 minutes. So everyone in the staff generally would do a broadcast, but you'd have other things to do in the radio station as well. It would be assigned to a radio telephone position, which is where you communicated with the aircraft, or you'd be on reliefs, which is relieving people on the radio telephone circuits and things like that. And of course, they had one of the first message-switching computers in the world, actually, in Valley Green at that time as well, which came live, I think, in 1968. So when I came in '71, that was one of the other things that you were involved with in keeping in mind what went on, and it was very basic compared to what computers do today. Technology has changed, it continues to change, but from listening to your shortwave radio data more to working at Valley Green, what path did you take them? Yeah, I did actually go to the Marine Radio School in Limerick, and the Marine Radio School in Limerick was situated in Henry Street, where the New Guard of Barracks is situated. So I was there for maybe about two and a half years, so I left there in May 1968, and I went as a trainee radio officer for six months with Marconi Marine, and I was assigned to a ship called the Donasilla, and the Donasilla was a shell tanker, 70,000 tons. So I did two trips in that, which lasted three months each, so six months mainly to the Persian Gulf and back, and then you'd waste in maybe Liverpool Bay to be told where to unload the cargo. So every RO, when they went to see initially had to have a training period, and that was my training period then, and after that, I went to a Mackandro line ship called the Viligus, and that mainly traded between Liverpool and Spain, General Cargo. So the reason I remember that one so well, it was the first time I really got seasick, because we were crossing the Bay of Biscay in winter, and the Bay of Biscay and a small ship don't go together. I was never seasick afterwards, thankfully, because when I'd be coming home, you didn't come home by air that time, you came home at a ferry, and sometimes you'd be crossing the RSC in winter, and you'd be looking around people or looking terrible, and you were eating steak, and you'd say, "What's wrong with them?" I got used to it. It was so horrendous for the week, it lasted with me. Even I remember one at the end of the year saying, "You'll have to eat, you'll have to eat, you just can't not eat." Even in the radio room, I was seasick, like, you know, because ship has gone all over the place up, down, sideways, you know. But after that, never, never seasick again. How long did you spend then in the merchant maybe? I only spent about three and a half years, but it was very formative years for me. For instance, the next ship I was on was the Velos, and the Velos was owned by Bootline. Now Bootline was a Liverpool-based shipping company, but they had to run, they used to run ships from New York to the Amazon. So my very first trip with them was New York to the Amazon, and when I mean the Amazon, all the way up the river to Echitas, which is in Peru, so it used to take two weeks to walk the river, and five days to come down, because the current was bringing you down so fast. But when people asked me, "Which ship did you like the most?" I liked them all, but that was the most interesting one, because, you know, like, my chances of visiting South America are the Amazon would be very remote otherwise, and also all the West Indian islands. I visited all the West Indian islands on that ship, and I was on that ship for nine months, and I was a bit reluctant to leave it, but you have to come home sometime. But generally, if you were based in Liverpool, you would get some time off, because the ship might be in Liverpool for two or three weeks, so the captain would say to you, "Just go home for a week and come back, but you would." You get a break. And anyway, like, when you were in port, your time was your own as a radio officer, so you could do what you liked in the city. You could go and visit the famous cathedral in Liverpool, which they used to call Paddy's Wig Wem, and, you know, when you see it, you can see the resemblance RS. I did actually go to another ship called the Roland, and that was the Lamberton Holeship, still coming out of Liverpool, but going to the other side of South America, which was mainly Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and I really liked that ship as well, and in that ship, we actually came into Cork, and I had a week home while they were all in Cork, but the rest of the crew loved Cork, they didn't want to leave, but I really liked that ship, but I did see an ad looking for radio officers with belly green, so obviously I responded to that. So on my second trip on the Roland, I left the Roland just after New Year in 1971, and I started in belly green in February 1971. What do you remember of the early days training for that new job in belly green? I remember you had to work half a day on Saturday, which was very awkward, and they were very strict about the time, you know, you had to be in it nine, well now they did have a bus service, but they were strict, like it was real civil service the way they operated, it's a lot more free now, possibly better, maybe, but you just accepted what was happening at the time. What did a big change from operating a radio on the high seas? Yeah, when you were at sea, you were the only radio officer, and when people talked to me about it now, I keep saying, you know, the responsibility that was on a young person's shoulders at that time, you didn't actually realize it at the time, but now looking back, you realize you were the only message of they had of communicating with the outside world when you were at sea, and in the case of a distress, it was all down to you to broadcast the message that you were in distress. Now thankfully, that never happened. As an arrow on a ship though, you got breaks, if you were the only arrow. You had to, you started at 8 in the morning. morning generally, so you did 8 to 10, 12 to 2, 4 to 6, 8 to 10, and then when you were off what, you had an automatic alarm, and if anyone transmitted a distress signal, that would send off the auto alarm, and you would go and listen and see, would you be of any assistance, but generally nothing ever happened like that, the alarm would go off fairly frequently, you would be hundreds of miles away from whatever was happening, so you would be no good from the point of view of the captain saying we would go to that, you know. The train you had as a radio officer on a ship, that obviously stood to you, with a band of green. Well, the one thing I keep saying about when you're on your own, you get very independent, because you have to be very independent, and you have to solve the problems that arise yourself. There's no one else you can talk to, because on a ship, you're in and out of the radio room, even when you're on watch, like you'd be out on the bridge, the other thing you always had to do every morning was you had to get a time signal, so they could check the chronometer, because when they were taking their noon day side, everything depended on that clock in accurate, and the other thing is you always had to have a weather forecast for the area that you were in. So, they were the two important things at the very first watch of the day, and the other thing then you had to do was you had to listen to Porta said radio for the traffic list, because if anyone wanted to communicate with you, which was by telegram really, it would come to Porta said radio. Your time in Balli Green then, from the day you started to the day you retired, you saw a lot of changes in technology. Yeah, when I went to Balli Green initially, the equipment was old, would have been 1950s era, the equipment, whereas on the ship, you would have relatively more modern equipment. Now, that did change, like, but it was the 1970s before you even saw the first single sideband receivers come to Balli Green, and a full re-equipment of Balli Green, the first re-equipment I can remember was in 1982 to '84, and they really replaced absolutely everything. They replaced transmitters, receivers, and ten as the lot. Did that mean there was extra training for the staff there? I was an engineer at that stage, so I moved over to engineering, so obviously you got training, but I was looking because a company called RCA got the contract for re-equipping, so when you were in duty, you'd help with the installation, and they had a great engineer there called Brian DeNute, and Brian DeNute would be there all hours of the day and night, and if you got on well with him, he showed you absolutely everything, and then there was another guy called Alan Lamberton. I still remember the names because I was so impressed with him, and the manufacturing company for the transmitters was a crowd called SPT, which meant sound-powered telephones. Now, that was only the name of the company, but the connection back to the ship is that there were sound-powered telephones on the ship, so when they were docking the ship, you'd have a telephone at the bow and the stern, and they would communicate with the bridge, but that was a sound-powered telephone, so that company manufactured transmitters, so those transmitters were new to us, and they were six-channel transmitters, normally before that you'd only have a single-channel transmitter, so that gave you a lot more flexibility, and of course the antennas changed as well. There was a major re-equipping in 2002 to 2004, and there was another re-equipping in 2014. The equipment generally has a lifespan of about 20 years, and then it's probably better to move up to something better. It doesn't always mean the equipment is better because when I look back at the design of the say-to-transmitters in the 1950s to '70s, they were excellent transmitters. They were American-made by a company called Will Cox. You could slide out the transmitter from its cabinet. You could actually look at that transmitter, and you could follow the diagram. If you had a diagram, you could see it all there before you, like the diagram. It had ease of access as well, so there was no sort of trying to get your hands around things or anything like that. You could actually just look at it, take a valve out, whatever, and replace it. Very user-friendly, but American equipment, because we had transmitters as well from America made by Airecom, Airecom were absolutely beautiful transmitters. It was the first transmitter I ever saw that they could plug and unplug transistors. You didn't have to solder them. You just unplug them. You just picked them up like that and took them on. It was such a good transmitter, like I actually loved that transmitter, and they have a transmitter here as well, and you've probably seen it down below. We call it the TA-4. The TA-4 was the first transmitter I suppose that came to Valley Green in the 1936, and it's an absolutely beautiful transmitter made by Marconi, but the different in style when you see that transmitter to the modern transmitters, like Chok and cheese, but they were still beautiful transmitters. I know people think you always talk about transmitters and equipment, but that's what you deal with every day, and when you see something that's so good, you have to talk about it. When you go in and see the oil technology as it's displayed here in the museum in foins, you think back to the early days and how things have changed. Yeah, I do, because when you look at the receivers that are on display down there, they're big, heavy. Now, they're big and heavy, and they look beautiful, some of them, but they weigh about half a hundred weight. When you look at a receiver today, you could practically just do that with it, so lies. And it's so flexible. I mean, you can have memory channels of thousands of channels, and you have squelch. Squelch means you don't hear a lot of the noise that goes on in HF radio. When I went to Valley Green initially, that was one of the things that used to really terrible on the years, because you get these bursts of static, and the receivers were amplitude modulated receivers, so you really feel the noise and the static. But modern receivers can have squelch on them, which means that if there isn't audio there, it doesn't activate your headphones or loudspeaker. Any particular memories that stand out for you, because you had a long career in Valley Green? I was actually more inclined to be at the transmitter station, so I really love the transmitter station. I always called my home from home, and I always enjoyed when we had contractors in. We used to have contractors in for the antennas, and I'd always go out with them, and we had an excellent contractor called John Hurley, and John Hurley used to come to the station while I was there for the best part of 25 years. And I got on very well with him, and unfortunately he died a few years ago, but he was great, a great man to have around you, because obviously I'm not going to climb a mast, but he climbed a mast, and I always used to be a bit stunned when you'd see them up at 225 feet. I couldn't climb 30 feet, but I'd want to come down. And that predictor sight is in Ardenmore, further down from Valley Green? Yes, that's the transmitter sight, so every time the RO speaks in Valley Green, the audio is transferred down to Ardenmore. At the moment they can go via microwave length by fiber optic or by ordinary telephone cable, and that goes out on the transmitter. The transmitter then could have a range of anything up to 5000 miles, no problem. You can transmit, but the antennas are one of the most important elements, like you can have the fanciest transmitter and the greatest transmitter, but unless you have the antennas to go with it, your audio is going to go nowhere. Valley Green of course deals with aircraft way out over the North Atlantic, in the air traffic control tower in Shannon, dealing with more local traffic arriving at the parking. You were there too. And I was in a comm section there as well, so down there you're dealing mainly with VHF transmitters. So you'd have VHF transmitters locally in the tower, but you'd also have VHF transmitters at the time. They had them in Woodcock Hill and Ballybanium, though you also had a lot of other equipment in the in the tower, like you had vice recorders, because everything had to be recorded. We used to service the radios on Shannon Air 1 and Shannon Air 2. They were sort of the rescue boats for the S-Straight. One of them was the mud crawler, people might remember the mud crawler, but they had the call signs, Shannon Air 1 and Shannon Air 2. So that was part of our setup as well. But I enjoyed the the tower as well. I was so reluctant to leave it, but I was going back to Harlem more, so Harlem more one out. Yeah. Coming up, we'll hear about an exhibition dedicated to 90 years of aeronautical radio communication that Ballygorene, which was recently opened in foins. We'll also meet another retired aeronautical radio officer. Air Nav Ireland's North Atlantic communication center provides communication services on the eastern half of the North Atlantic and is located at Ballygorene in County Claire. It is known as Shannon Air Radio or Shanwick Radio. Established in October 1936 on a 90 acre sight near Dremoland, the station initially provided Ground Communications via Mars. code for transatlantic flying boats operating out of foins. Following the expansion of commercial aviation in the aftermath of World War II, a move to the current purpose-built facility in 1951 coincided with the industry's transition from Mars Code to voice communications. Earlier this month, a special exhibition was opened at the Foins Flying Boat and Maritime Museum celebrating the Center at Valley Green. Paul McCann, AirNav Ireland's Director of ATM Operations and Strategy, spoke at that special event. It's a real pleasure to welcome you here today as we open this exhibition celebrating 90 years of Air Navigation Services in Ireland. Today, we are celebrating more than an anniversary. We are recognising the people, achievements and legacy that have shaped Air Navigation Services in Ireland for 90 years. The exhibition also shows the vital role Shannon and the wider region played in connecting Europe and North America and shaping Ireland's place in international aviation. From Valley Green and Foins, to later the North Atlantic operations, a story is part of this region's aviation history. As we walk around this exhibition today, we will see photographs, documents, equipment and artifacts behind each one of this is a person, a colleague and a story. Among the invited guests at Fat Celebration in Foins was Mike Kerwin, another retired aeronautical radio officer at Shannon Air Radio in Valley Green. Mike's father was one of the first radio officers at the new facility in 1936. Mike was also working on the days that staff at Valley Green faced for two greatest challenges. The bombing of Air India Flight 182 over the Atlantic Ocean in 1985 and the unprecedented events of September 11th, 2001 in the United States. Mike graduated from the Marine Radio School in Limerick and, like many of his colleagues, his career as a radio officer began at sea. While he enjoyed life at sea, it had his drawbacks too. Life at sea was good for a single person, but getting married, it meant being away four months at a time and at home for two months, and it wasn't great for family life. So I decided to get a job ashore and the vacancy came up in Shannon Air Radio, Valley Green in 1981 and I was successful and got the job there. So I spent 37 and a half years in Valley Green and it was a great job and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Now, my dad had gone in there in 1936 and he's one of the first radio officers to be involved in setting up the station and like me, he was also a marine radio officer and had worked to see as well. If you didn't get the opportunity to go to Valley Green, what other option would have been available to you? Well, the options were very limited for a radio officer ashore. I did have a job in the United Kingdom servicing the electron microscopes for a Japanese company, but again, I was involved in a lot of travel and I'd be away Monday to Friday and just home for the weekends, so I was really glad to get the job. Back then, you could be posted to either Malinhead or Valencia as there were two quotations were part of the service. Well in Valencia and in Malinhead, there were dealing with ships like the job they had at sea, but the one in Valley Green were specifically dealing with their traffic communications. The place was known to the pilot as Shanwick because the control center was in Presbyk in Scotland and the communications was in Valley Green and the pilot knew it as Shanwick. So each day we worked maybe about 800 flights going westbound and the same amount coming back during the night time and all the messages would be passed down to Presbyk to the control center in Scotland. While that a big transition from going from a position at the radio officer on a ship to working on land with aircraft. Not a major transition now because again, it was involved in communications and we were well used to dealing with different frequencies and high frequency communications and we would be able to work out what was the best frequency to call the flight on. So from that point of view, it wasn't a great change. Now back in the early days, they were using Mars code. So Mars code was the way of communication up to 1990 or so with that all faded out and satellite communication took over at sea. So communication in air traffic communications was all by voice. What do you remember, Mike, of arriving in Valley Green for the first time? It's a different job, joining a new team, meeting new people and training of course far the new job. Arriving in Valley Green, it was nice to know that I was joining people that had a similar job to me at sea and there's great camaraderie in discussing ships we'd worked on and placed the way we'd been to while we were at sea and we'd often come across one another and gone to the same radio schools. So we worked shipwork, we do work two days, two evenings, two nights and then three days off. It was a very enjoyable career and I very much enjoyed it. Shocked the air traffic this morning in India, like 182 contacted Shannon the normal way on reaching the Shannon boundary. It was cleared to London at 310, 31000 feet but five six minutes later the radar controller observed that the aircraft was no longer on the radar screen and every effort at that stage to establish communications with it were unsuccessful. Two aircraft in the vicinity were called contacted and they could neither establish communication with it or indeed any visual contact. The full-scale search and rescue mission was organised at that particular stage. It was in duty that nice and we were due to James shift at 8 o'clock in the morning and at about 22 o'clock in the morning we gave the flight the frequency to change over to Shannon control and about five minutes later we got a call from Shannon to ask us to call the flight on all frequencies and we sort of knew something was not quite right and I specifically remembered it was a Sunday morning and we were just getting ready to come off duty so it sticks in my mind wherever sitting in the underground room. This was different because it was already on the radar control in Shannon and Shannon were very much aware, Shannon air traffic control was very much aware that there was a big big problem and it got flights in the vicinity to call Dear India flight as well as well in asking us to call flights nearby so when you there was something seriously wrong. On the day of 9/11 you weren't actually working you became aware of it and you went to work. On the day of 9/11 I was rusted for duty from 4 o'clock to midnight. Now I was out cutting the grass around half plus one to quarter to two and my wife came out to me and said something has happened over in New York and I went in and we watched the television and saw the whole thing unveil and I said to her I better go to work early because it'll be very very busy with flights having to turn back. So I got into my car and arrived at work maybe about half an hour early at about maybe quarter past three or so and it was very very busy with flights being given instructions to either turn back or divert to other airports. You knew that all hell was going to break please. I knew yes I did. You knew it had to be in but you were going to be working anyway but you would have gone in anyway even if you weren't on shift. Yes I would yes yes but now there are very much set procedures for any event that happens with air traffic incidents. Some flights came back between the tracks of the other flights and others were diverted to other airports depending where they were and the North Atlantic at the time. People diverted to Canadian airports and some returned to Shannon and some returned back to Heathrow or UK airports as well. So a lot of aircraft in the same airspace at the same time unexpectedly. Did you ever experience anything like that before 9/11 or afterwards? No that's the only time we have where I had an event like that on the North Atlantic. You stay in touch with a lot of your colleagues and you get together regularly know that you're all retired. Yes that's correct. The monthly meeting on the first Tuesday of each month in Bonrassie and most of my colleagues either live in Shannon, Ennis or Limerick and we get a text on WhatsApp to tell us there's a meeting next Tuesday, the first Tuesday of the month and perhaps about 15 to 20 people turn up and we have a nice morning of coffee and a meet for about an hour or so. Telling stories? Telling stories and again remembering the characters that were in Balli Green and we had some very very good characters in Balli Green to talk about. How important is that Mike having retired from a job after 37 and a half years that you can keep in touch with your former colleagues and you can still talk about the work you did together? I think it's very important to have something to do with your retire and that's part of my structure now for one day in the month and I look forward to it very much and there'd be different people go each month so and you'd sit with different people so you get a chance to find out what they're doing and how they're liking every retirement and what they're up to. I was a bit worried about leaving the job when I did leave and I made sure that I'd get involved in something else so I do a lot of volunteering work and I drive for the Cancer Society and I'm a volunteer with Milford Hospice so I get busy with my life and I enjoy a bit of travel. as well. Today must be particularly special for you celebrating 90 years of belly green especially when your dad was there from the start. Yes today's a very important day to farm me because back in the 50th anniversary my dad wrote a lot of the history for me of the station and I've been able to continue it since and I have published the magazine for the 75th anniversary so hopefully from around for the 100th I'll publish an update. Strange enough to the whole my whole career there was talk of the place closing down but it never happened and good to hear last month there a crew of 6 or 7 more radio officers so I think it has a good future and delighted to hear that. Aviation is changing and it's going to evolve in Ireland. Technology will change, new challenges will emerge but the values at the heart of our work will remain the same. Safety, people, professionism, service, innovation and a pride in what we do. As we looked at the next 90 years we must honour that legacy while building the future we must lead, we must innovate and we must adapt. Giving that next generations the skills and technology to keep Ireland connected and our skies safe. Aviation will change but our commitment to safety and service must continue to guide us. [Music]