FAA awards $1.6 million contract to replace roof at McGrath navigation station

The Federal Aviation Administration awarded a $1.6 million contract Oct. 27 to RG Tenney Electric Inc. of Loganville, Georgia, to replace the roof on McGrath's VOR navigation facility, according to the federal award record. VOR stands for very high frequency omnidirectional range.

Work is scheduled to run through June 30, 2027. The $1.6 million is the amount obligated so far, not what has been spent. The contract was set aside for small businesses and drew three offers, the record shows.

The station is a VORTAC, a combined VOR and military tactical air navigation unit, at McGrath Airport, which has no control tower. The FAA's current approach charts list GPS and localizer approaches at McGrath, none of them a VOR approach, though the localizer chart lists the McGrath VORTAC.

The McGrath station is also part of the FAA's broader shift in Alaska. In a February Federal Register proposal, the agency said portions of airway V-320 were unusable because of limited signal coverage between the McGrath and Anchorage facilities, and proposed revoking it. The FAA's final rule, published Oct. 16, revokes V-320 in Alaska entirely effective Dec. 24. It also creates an RNAV (area navigation) route, T-550, between the FRIDA fix and the Anchorage VOR/DME.

As Alaska News reported in August, the FAA has been rebuilding Alaska's air routes, trading old ground beacons for GPS. As of early October, it was retiring more than a dozen beacons while still paying to keep roads to others plowed.

RG Tenney Electric has done similar work before. A separate federal award record shows a $2.7 million FAA contract for a new counterpoise for VOR antennas and a roof replacement at the Key West, Florida, VOR.