Sound effects: More Raptors at Nellis mean added noise for nearby residents

Jace Radke

Thursday, Aug. 26, 2004 | 11:09 a.m.

While the Air Force's newest fighter, the FA-22 Raptor, is bringing new capabilities to the military, it will also bring more noise to the residents living around Nellis Air Force Base.

Nellis is home to four Raptors, but by 2008 the base will be home to 17 of the planes which will add about 4,000 flights to the approximately 50,000 sorties flown out of the base every year.

"The noise changes based on how many flights we have," Nellis spokesman Mike Estrada said. "If a new wing were to move to Nellis we'd have more noise."

Raptors are currently taking off and landing once or twice a day at Nellis, and are slightly louder than other similar fighter aircraft. The Navy's F-18 Super Hornet has been measured as giving off about 113 decibels while flying about 1,000 feet off the ground.

Raptors, which have more powerful engines than Super Hornets, usually run about 12 to 15 decibels louder than the Navy fighter, Estrada said.

By comparison, a thunderclap measures about 120 decibels, while a NASCAR race at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway or the percussion section of a symphony averages about 130 decibels, according to the League for the Hard of Hearing, a non-profit organization.

"Standing out on the flight line I haven't really noticed much of difference between the Raptor and other fighters," Estrada said.

The noise gain will become more evident in 2008 when all 17 Raptors are flying out of Nellis. Although the Raptor is scheduled to replace the F-15 Eagle, F-15s will continue to fly the same amount of missions at Nellis, resulting in more flights and more noise.

F-15s will be slowly phased out but it will take years before less missions are flown with the aircraft that debuted in 1979, Estrada said.

The additional FA-22 flights will raise the noise contours around Nellis dramatically in the north along Interstate 15, but will not have much of an effect on the neighborhoods and businesses to the south and southeast of the base.

Residents and workers around Nellis haven't noticed much of a difference in the amount of noise coming from jet engines overhead since the Raptor began flying out of the base last year.

Clark County Commissioner Mary Kincaid-Chauncey, who represents the area around Nellis, has not received any new complaints due to increased noise, a spokesman said.

Estrada said he gets complaints from time to time, but mostly they are from the rural counties on the east side of the nearly 3-million acre Nevada Test and Training Range. Locally, the base sees about five noise complaints quarterly during the increased flight activity of Red Flag training exercises.

Bonnie Graham was having a garage sale Monday at her home in the 2300 block of Christy Lane south of Nellis off Carey Avenue.

"I don't really mind the noise from the planes," said Graham as she sat outside. "It's loud, but I also think it's kind of interesting to watch them fly by.

"They usually fly a lot less at night, and that's nice."

The majority of Nellis takeoffs and landings are between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m., Estrada said.

Graham's house gets between 65 and 75 decibels of sound when jets pass overhead. According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health exposure to 85 decibels for more than eight straight hours can cause some hearing loss.

Teachers at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School, near Carey and Las Vegas Boulevard, said they don't even hear the jets pass overhead anymore. They said the noise doesn't hinder their teaching, and that they are too busy to pay much attention to them.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is scheduled to begin flying at Nellis in 2009, and by 2028 36 of the planes are scheduled to be based at Nellis. The F-35 could push existing noise contours out further from Nellis and into Northeast Las Vegas neighborhoods.