Cranbrook Airport

$10,000 TO BE SPENT ON CITY AIRPORT. – Grant Made By Department of Transport For Extending And Improving Landing Facilities Here.

            Work began on Tuesday morning at the city airport, where the field, at present about 2,000 feet in length, will be lengthened to 4,000 feet and levelled off under the direction of the city works department.

            The job will occupy about thirty men for the next few months, and will be completed by November 30.  The total cost will be $10,300, which is being supplied by the Civil Aviation branch of the Department of Transport.

            The field has been surveyed for this new work which will be done as rapidly as possible.  The lengthwise extension will be on the south end, toward the fence which runs along beside the road into Slaterville.  At present the southern thousand feet are a mass of humps and hollows which will be levelled off and boulders removed.

            The field at present is just large enough to accommodate Electra 10’s, the type of plane which has dropped in there frequently in the past year in connection with establishment of the radio range station and field equipment.  The new Lockheed 14’s which are being delivered to Trans-Canada Airlines at regular intervals this year from Burbank, Cal., are considerably larger and require much larger landing area.  The new field will probably be large enough to accommodate these.

            At present none of the fields between Lethbridge and Vancouver are big enough for the 14’s which are being used in the regular practice night flights between the Pacific coast and Winnipeg.

            When the work is completed Cranbrook may very well have the most adequate airport facilities between the coast and the Rockies with a big field, a revolving light beacon, an illuminated runway, obstruction lights on all nearby hazards, two-way radio transmission facilities twenty-four hours a day through the Civil Aviation bureau, and two-way transmission through TCA’s radio equipment, remote control radio range beam operations and a Canadian Meteorological Bureau station right on the field.

            The field will be widened in the section which now has the runway, and the whole field will be an inclined plane with a maximum grade of 2 per cent.  With the addition of a fifth in length, the course of the runway may be changed later.

            1938 is apparently a big year in the city’s history, marking as it does the fortieth anniversary of one method of transportation, a method which opened the interior of British Columbia.  Airways, the newest transportation, which should help unify the far-flung and diversified dominion, also includes Cranbrook in its route.

            Today should see the conclusion of further work at the radio range beam towers, with the painting of the towers which has been in process for the past ten days.  The towers are being done in horizontal stripes in international special paint used on metal work.

            Painting goes on from eight in the morning until six at night, during which time the radio beam is turned off since there is serious danger of burning when it is turned on.  As day practice flights have been cancelled this week schedules are not interfered with.

            Working on the job are George Parrotti and Gene Faby, who were members of the crew who constructed the tower early fall of last year.

            The paint job will make the towers highly visible from the air in daylight, helping in contact flying.