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Noise issue delays Eglin JSF basing decision

A decision on locating the F-35 Lightning II schoolhouse at Eglin Air Force Base is delayed until 2009, the Air Force announced Friday morning.

What might have seemed a routine choice ran into community opposition after the Air Force’s own studies found that the F-35 is twice as loud as F-15 Eagles now based there.

In Eglin military housing areas and base schools, noise from F-35 operations would be twice as loud as F-15 flights, reaching 83 decibels. Off base, F-35 noise would be even louder, reaching up to 90 decibels in civilian neighborhoods under an Eglin flight path.

In the city of Valparaiso, along the north side of Eglin, civic leaders bristled at an Air Force suggestion that residents and businesses under the F-35’s flight path move to quieter areas.

The service was expected to announce Friday how Eglin would have set up the training wing. The options included where to locate the wing on Eglin’s main base complex and how many training landings and takeoffs should be done at auxiliary airfields several miles from the main base.

There could be plenty of opportunities at Eglin to hear just how loud an F-35 is. On training days, about 125 F-35s will take off and land at Eglin, an Air Force study said.

Overall, the combination of louder engines and different flight patterns drastically expands the areas where engine roar could reach 75 decibels and higher.

If the F-35 is based at Eglin, the number of people living near the base exposed frequently to sound levels of 75 decibels or more would jump from 142 people to 2,174, the report said.

Still, the new center might bring some good news: jobs

Overall, 2,146 airmen, sailors and Marines would be assigned to the training wing, including 109 student pilots and 436 student maintainers. In addition, 180 civilians would work for the wing.

The training wing replaces the operational 33rd Fighter Wing, now phasing out as its two squadrons of F-15s are retired or sent to other units