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Old 10th February 2010, 01:01 AM
Nigel C Nigel C is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: The farm
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One or two nights??? 45m wide x ~4km long??? No chance!!!!

Ignoring the need to replace the lighting (runway edge and taxiway lead-out lighting), the first night is typically just profiling or milling the surface layer of the asphalt for maybe a couple of hundred metres. There might be some paving or laying of new asphalt, but the paving crew can only go as far as the milled section. Any painted markings removed by the profiler must be replaced by the end of the night.

Each night after that the paving crew will lay the new surface over the stuff that was milled the night before, and the profilers (3 at a time) will prepare the surface for the next night. They might lay 250-300m of new asphalt in a night, using up to 3 'shuttle buggies' connected to 3 pavers (+1 on site usually as a spare). Again, all painted markings must be replaced.

The runway has to be serviceable for the first arrival, so all debris has to be removed. There might be 3 or 4 street sweepers operating at the same time.

Total time for just resheeting the runway might be 2-3 weeks without any rain delay, but then there's the lighting to be reinstated and that can take possibly months to completely restore. Grooving the runway takes place ~6 weeks after the new asphalt has gone down, and that's a loooong sloooow process.
The available reduced length runway configurations the freighters require during curfew may also dictate what days the work can be restricted to, so the process could be dragged out a fair bit longer.

I hope this helps.



Pictures added in case you're not familiar with the jargon...
Profiler

Paver

Shuttle Buggy
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