CAMDEN — The Navy will be flying F/A-18 SuperHornets over Camden County in the next year to show the community what type of noise they would make if a pilot training field was located here.

A Navy spokesman made the comment at a public "scoping" meeting at Camden High School on Tuesday attended by hundreds of residents.

Justin Falls/The Daily Advance (ENLARGE)

Denise Mitchell, (left), and Rosie Hale, (right), talk as Fred Pierson, (back left), a community planner for the U.S. Navy, explains data on a noise contour map to William Mitchell during the Navy's 'scoping' meeting on its proposed outlying landing project at Camden County High School, Monday.

At that meeting, Navy officials passed out literature and spoke one on one to residents about the proposed Outlying Landing Field, a pilot training field where touch and go landings and takeoffs would be practiced mainly at night before pilots graduated to carrier ships.

Navy officials also passed out literature to try and clear up "misperceptions" about how the field might impact Camden County if it is chosen.

But they had a tough sell.

Most residents said the field would ruin Camden.

"Our whole lifestyle (with an OLF) will be destroyed here," Camden resident Pat Cuthrell said.

The Navy is studying the Hales Lake site in Camden, the Sandbanks site in Gates County, as well as three sites in Virginia for the OLF.

At the scoping meeting, Navy officials also solicited input from residents, who jotted down their concerns on paper and stuck them in comment boxes.

It was the Navy's sixth "scoping" meeting to take public input as part of a kickoff to an environmental impact statement study. The two-year study will be used by the Navy to recommend what site moves forward in the summer of 2010.

Navy spokesman Ted Brown said the flyover demonstration in Camden will occur within the next year after proposed flight patterns have been established through this study.

He said there would be advance notice so residents could make sure they are in their homes and businesses to truly gauge the real jet noise.

He said the noise in the demonstration would be louder than if the jets were actually touching down. He said they would only fly as low as 500 feet.

"At that altitude, the noise is actually going to spread out farther," Brown said.

"What we want to do is eliminate a lot of the speculation (about jet noise)," he said.

He pointed to a chart showing the Navy's 30,000-acre jet noise contour, which illustrates areas in Camden where jet noise might be irritating to some. He said there is no doubt the jet noise will be extremely loud in the 2,000-acre landing area in the middle of this ring, which is why the Navy would buy that land.

"That's why we don't want anyone to live there," Brown said. "But it's (the noise) going to get progressively quieter as you go out from here (the landing strip), and we believe a lot of the people who live outside of this area are probably thinking it's going to be a lot louder than it's going to be."

Veronica Gubbs lives outside of the 30,000-acre noise contour zone in Moyock and is convinced the jet noise will be unbearable for her family.

She said it makes sense to locate an OLF in a less congested area than Camden and Currituck.

"People down here are retired," she said.

She has lived in Moyock since 1994 and raised her children there. She said she plans to stay, and hopes the OLF is not part of the future.

"I would like them (her children) to have a peaceful environment," she said.

The Navy's literature touted some of the economic benefits of the OLF, noting 62 full-time civilian jobs, $4.2 million in yearly salaries and benefits, and $68,000 average annual pay, plus benefits.

The literature said that the construction of an OLF would result in civilian jobs and construction-related dollars that would positively impact the local community over the two-year period

The Navy estimates that the construction work would generate 560 to 630 jobs, with regional economic impact of $100 million.

Navy officials also passed out literature about "misconceptions" about the OLF.

One of those, it said, was that the Navy could use a decommissioned carrier or offshore platform for the OLF.

"The demanding task of landing an aircraft on the deck of a carrier must be practiced on land with an adequate margin for safety prior to attempting to perform that task," the Navy response stated.

Another "misperception," the literature stated, was that the Navy could use abandoned or underutilized existing military or civilian airfields for an OLF. It said the Navy has evaluated several existing military airfields recommended by officials in the state of North Carolina and Virginia, including Fort Pickett, Fort A.P. Hill, and Wallops Island, and none are considered feasible.

"Concerns with these sites include conflicts with existing operations, high populations near the airfields, and the distance of these locations from NAS Oceana and Naval Station Norfolk," the Navy response said. "The transit time, fuel usage, the physical wear on the airframe would be unacceptable. The same is true for civilian commercial airports, such as Kinston Airpark in North Carolina."