U.S. Navy Aerographer’s Mates (AGs) of Naval Aviation Forecasting Component (NAFC) Whidbey Island turned over the role
of weather observation with Department of the Navy civilians, Sept. 1.
The Control Systems Research, Inc. (CSR) observers are currently earning qualifications to assume the occupation of providing
Naval Air Station (NAS) Whidbey Island with continuous, up-to-date, current weather conditions to the pilots and aircrews so
they can accomplish their mission.
“My job is to organize the personnel who will be working here and to ensure they receive the training they need to be qualified
prior to us taking over the contract,” said Vickie Baird, supervisor of the CSR observer site on Whidbey Island.
“Our whole job is to observe the weather and ensure the product that we put out is of the best quality possible. We have high
standards, we have to have a 98 percent proficiency rate overall each month. It’s a constant update, quality control process that
[CSR] brings to this whole job since it’s concentrating on observations and making sure our product is the best it can be,” added Baird.
NAFC Whidbey Island will maintain four full-time and at least two part-time CSR observers vice the three AGss currently filling the
round-the-clock responsibility. The tasking for forecasting during peak flight hours will remain fulfilled by two Navy forecasters,
though.
“Hopefully this transition is going to be seamless,” said AG2 Jeremy Hoke, a forecaster and the NAFC Whidbey Island petty officer in
charge. “Their methodology is pretty much identical as far as how they perform their duties and how the product gets disseminated
out to the customer, so it should be smooth.”
Although some capabilities will be limited with the transition, such as non-access to flight weather briefer for the CSR employees, they
bring improvements to quality control with the added documentation of an equipment log, error log, and a log to annotate integrated
voice communication switching system transactions.
“As far as logs are concerned, the better documentation we have, especially if there is an incident, the better we can recreate or understand
what was going on at the time,” said Cmdr. Peter Mehl, NAS Whidbey Island operations officer. “It can help provide legal information that
ensures everyone does their job correctly and there isn’t any negligence on anyone’s part. It’s a positive thing.”
The first civilian watch will be assumed by Ed Schumacher, a former Navy AG who was stationed at NAS Whidbey Island as a forecaster
from 2003 to 2005. He is one of three such personnel who will be observing for CSR.
“Since I was a forecaster and an observer here before I just basically had to familiarize myself with the data again and take a test to qualify,”
said Schumacher. “With the three of us who have been stationed here before we should be able to maintain good consistency with our
product. Although we’re civilians, we do have prior military experience and knowledge of the way this office ran in the past, so we can
maintain consistency for the customers.”
Both parties understand there will be some differences once the change takes effect, but will work together to develop coherence with
each other.
“Overall, I’m looking forward to the transition; I’m excited to see how it’s going to work and I’m looking forward to helping NAFC and the
tenant commands work together to ensure everyone’s needs are met and that we continue the excellent service we have here at Whidbey
Island,” said Mehl.