George Coast Guard toasts new equipment

Station receives more precise technology

Photos: 1. The crew of LORAN-C Station George get their picture taken before the Thursday morning ceremony to honor the installation of a new generation of equipment.

2. Rear Admiral Jeffrey Garrett, U.S. Coast Guard 13th district commander (center) prepares to cut the ribbon during the Thursday morning ceremony to honor the installation of a new generation of equipment at the LORAN-C Station in George.

3. The American flag flaps in the wind as the crew of LORAN-C Station George stand on the lawn before the Thursday morning ceremony to honor the installation of a new generation of equipment.

4. Rear Admiral Jeffrey Garrett, U.S. Coast Guard 13th district commander, addresses the audience during the Thursday morning ceremony to honor the installation of a new generation of equipment at the LORAN-C Station in George.

5. Capt. Curtis Dubay makes his remarks during the Thursday morning ceremony to honor the installation of a new generation of equipment at the LORAN-C Station in George.

Capt. Curtis Dubay has heard the question before:

Why is the Coast Guard in the middle of Washington state?

But Dubay knows the answer. He shared it as one of the speakers at the Coast Guard's Long Range Navigation (LORAN-C) station in George Thursday morning.

"The fact is, the Coast Guard is here, in George, Wash., because this is where the Coast Guard is needed," Dubay said. "The signals from this station travel outward for about 1,000 miles in every direction, and they aid maritime and aviation navigators, as well as timing users."

The station held a ceremony to honor its recent installation of a Megapulse New Solid State Transmitter (nSSX) to bring the station's technology up to date.

"Today we're here to celebrate the installation and operation of our newest generation of equipment for LORAN, and a new generation of timing frequency equipment," Dubay told the audience. "The new equipment that is online here today would have been considered the stuff of science fiction when this station first opened."

Chief Kevin T. Anderson, officer in charge of the LORAN Station George, said that the old system required a number of adjustments every day, anywhere from 20 to 30 a day.

"The users — which are the ships and aircraft — basically wanted an uninterruptible signal," Anderson said. "Obviously they want something that's very, very precise."

Anderson said that in LORAN there used to be quite a bit of drift above and below where they were supposed to be, which was normal, but in order to change that, the users demanded that they become much more precise.

"The new transmitter equipment that we have now is much more precise; it only requires one adjustment per day," Anderson said. "Those adjustments generally are to the timing of the signal to one-millionth of a second. Actually, I'll be even more accurate: It's actually a 20 billionth of a second adjustment."

The complete installation of the new equipment took about two years, Anderson said.

In January 2002, the station began construction of the new facility for its solid state transmitter. The building was completed between April and May of 2002 and equipment installations proceeded. The new transmitter was placed in the new building in February 2003, new timing equipment was put in May through August and everything was hooked up to transmit in October.

But it wasn't quite smooth sailing just yet.

"In early October, we put the new solid state transmitter online, and we discovered, because of the level of power that we were transmitting — this was the highest powered transmitter that the company that built it ever put into place — we encountered a problem that they had never seen before," Anderson said. "We had to reconfigure it and rerun the wires."

The problem caused the station to suffer a major casualty to the equipment and necessitated an emergency overnight switch over to the original tube transmitters, he said.

The new transmitter was later placed online permanently in December, Anderson said.

During the ceremony, Anderson praised the rest of the crew for their hard work during the building of the new facility and installation of the new equipment, often time working up to 80-hour workweeks and taking turns coming in for 12-hour shifts on the weekends.

"Coast Guard people, on a daily basis, go way above and beyond what the public pays them to do," Anderson said. "That's something that's not readily known; people just think, 'Well, the Coast Guard is out there doing their job. That's what they get paid to do.' The average Coastie usually works way above and beyond a typical 40-hour work week; these guys are no exception to that."