This year's north Davis County summer will be noisy, Hill Air Force Base warns, because the base now has three F-16 squadrons.
"We have three times as many planes as in the past here now," Lt. John Thomas, HAFB representative, told the Clearfield City Council recently, explaining Hill now has more F-16s that anywhere else in the world and with no current war involvement overseas, they are all back in Utah.He said it's critical to national security to have pilots train regularly during nighttime missions and the only time they can do that is fly at dark.
Thomas said the pilots have to wait until about 30 minutes before dark to take off to fly to the west desert training range and so that means there will be a lot of takeoffs between 10 and 10:30 p.m.
"We understand this makes a lot of noise," Thomas said, explaining the base appreciates citizen cooperation on noise tolerance.
Hill also plans on bunching up training flights this year, meaning they will mostly be confined from Monday to Thursday evenings in a two- to three-week period. This will equal eight to 12 noisy nights each month this summer. Then, they'll take about 1 1/2 weeks off each month.
F-16s take off over Layton, but the noise easily carries to Clear- field and other surrounding communities.
"We really enjoy the sounds of freedom," Mayor Neldon Hamblin said.
Thomas also said Hill's F-16 squadrons are among the best in the world, as proven in competitions such as Gunsmoke.