I'm probably not the only reader who's tired of reading about a few people complaining about airport noise after they bought a house by the airport, or about people picking on the little skydive plane that serves a whole community of family skydivers.
So I wandered down to the skydive office and talked to the pilot for awhile. He explained that he takes off into the wind and leaves Vernon to fly a big loop by Swan Lake/Okanagan Lake to do his climbing.
By the time he gets back over Vernon to do the drop, he's about two miles (10,000-plus feet) in the sky.
Two miles up and a vanishingly small dot up in the sky somewhere, and people are still whining.
After the drop, he coasts back down in near silence, since the propeller isn't making noise any more. Anyone who's watched a propeller plane come in a for a landing knows that the noise level is really quiet.
I concluded that he's very responsible and doing everything possible to reduce noise for residents.
I talked to the airport supervisor too. It turns out that Vernon is centrally located for a lot of air-based services, including Kal Tire, charter planes and helicopters. The helicopters saved no less than five cherry orchards from the rain this year.
My friend lives one block from the airport. I told him about the letters to the editor, and he looked at me in disbelief. "He was complaining about noise from this airport? This airport?"
He couldn't believe that people would complain. He and his family would never think of complaining.
And as for noise, including this pathetic addition to the written noise on the topic, I don't even think of complaining about the constant booming traffic of cars, trucks, motorcycles, straight pipes, gravel trucks, buses and racers that blast by 100 feet from my window on Okanagan Avenue from 6 a.m. noon every day.
Unlike some other people, I do not have the expectation that the world should be quiet just because it bugs me. Instead, I do the rational thing instead of writing The Morning Star. I just close the window, and listen to the TV or radio when the traffic gets too bothersome outside.
Heavens above (puns intended), I say lighten up with big balloons of hot air on the tiny airplane noise two miles high in the sky. It's just not that loud. I can easily create more noise by laughing.
K. Jameson
Vernon