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Show . Wingovers ' ALL THE NEWS THAT'S FIT TO PRINT FROM THE DELTA AIRPORT" DICK MORRISON FLEDGLING . . . Reliance Wood took her first plane ride Sunday, with her cousin, cous-in, Bob Jones, piloting the Champ. She reports feeling the sensation common to first flyers, of hanging motionless in the air while doing 100 mph. Bob took Wells Wood for a little hop, too. Wells has flown a couple of times before; one in a military plane and once with the now.Jegendary haylift. STARTS COURSE . . . Verrue Theobald started his flying fly-ing course under the GI training program making his familiarization flight Sunday. THAT BELLANCA . . . Carter and Woodhouse of Span-, ish Fork have been using Del-Aero Aeronca Sedan the past few days, for work especially adapted to it, and have loaned Delta their 4-place 4-place Bellanea in exchange. The . Bellanea is both faster and rougher rough-er riding than the Aeronca, with higher power and smaller wings. Leon Theobald is getting quite a kick out of flying it. He took Bill Humphries and "Snooks" Black for a little stunting in it. Mac Shields, John Nutsch and I were treated to a ride in it Sunday with Leo Burraston piloting. Leo's idea of fun is to cavort around the sky in a plane like that, and it was hard to keep track of the horizon. hori-zon. Buzzing the airport at 160 gave me a slight idea of what it must feel like to fly an F-51 twice that fast. WEEK END VISIT . . . Capl. Roy Brentliger and family, of Las Vegas, spent the week end here visiting Mrs. Brentlinger's parents, par-ents, Mr. and Mrs. Arv Rose. AIRCRAFT USE REPORT . . . The CAA has just issued a report re-port showing trends of aircraft use in 1949, showing that industrial flying, which includes crop dusting, dust-ing, Increased 64 over the previous pre-vious year, while, at the other extreme, ex-treme, instructional 'flying dropped 52c because of a tapering off ofj I GI flight training. Personal and business flying held up very well. The number of privately owned aircraft by owners1 own-ers1 employed outsWe the aviation industry increased from 32,290 to 40,830 in two years. Flying farmers farm-ers accounted for 10,500 planes and the third largest group of private owners was automobile and garage gar-age service men with 5,350, follower fol-lower by professional men such as doctors, lawyers and dentists, with 4,140. Planes owned by petroleum companies com-panies got the most use, being used us-ed for aerial exploration as well as private transportation. Small executive type aircraft, of three to 'five passengers and 145 to 199 hp gained in number and usage. FIND WRECKAGE . . . While prospecting on the Fish Springs mountains last Thursday, Al Willden and Leonel Petty discov ered the wreckage of some kind of aircraft. A large amount of twis ted, battered aluminum and other metal parts were scattered over a half mile area, near the top of the mountain. It was in an inaccessible inac-cessible spot which could be reached reach-ed only by foot. They brought a few pieces of the wreckage to Delta in their Jeep. These were exanind by N. E. Ward, Leo Burraston, Merritt Floyd, Grant Workman and others at the airport, and the concensus of opinion is that the craft may have been a guided missile.. A small section of an airfoil and fittings fit-tings leave no doubt that the parts are of an aircraft. A foot long section made o'f sheet aluminum was evidently designed as a wing, tail or control part. It is about six inches across, and a little more than one inch thick at the forward edge. Two pieces of heavy cast aluminum, alum-inum, which may have been bulkheads bulk-heads in the fuselage show evidence evid-ence of being badly battered, scraped, scra-ped, and partly melted. Lionel and Al say they saw no evidence of wheels in the wreckage. Probably the craft was a guided missile which exploded when it hit the mountain. This seems probable because the Fish Springs Mts. are in the army's restricted area, which is used for experiments with such weapons. Nate Ward tells us that Granite Peak, north of Fish Springs, has been used as a target. Maybe this missile overshot the target. Nate reports, too, that about four years ago, he piloted Will Killpack on a flight into the area to investigate invest-igate reports of similar wreckage. SOUPY SUNDAY . . . Wind, low clouds and snow flurries flur-ries made Sunday a poor day for local flying, although Don Bird bra ved the weather and took his second sec-ond hour of dual instruction. The LA-SL Airway was busy as usual with passenger transports, Army and Navy craft flying by IFR at altitudes of over 11,000 ft. Communicator Com-municator Art Rose Jells us that such days give the radio men more rather than less work to do, because be-cause every plane flying instrument instru-ment flight rules along the airway must check with each radio station. stat-ion. TAKE OFFS AND LANDINGS . . . Don Searle piloted a Luscombe down from Provo Saturday, with Ray Jacobs his passenger. , Pilot Bill Waggner of Salt Lake flew to Delta Feb. 13, to pick up the Cessna purchased from Frank Pace. CIRCLE AND SHADOW . . . Flying to Salt Lake Tuesday with Leo Burraston in the Aeronca sedan, I observed the first full circle cir-cle rainbow I have ever seen. The time was about 0940. We were crossing the mountains northwest north-west of Eureka. Light fog clouds had formed about the mountain tops, and it was in these that the circular rainbow appeared, below and to the left of us. The shadow of our plane was distinct, and, of course, exactly in the center of the circle. Since the clouds were very near us, the circle was rather small, and the shadow o'f the plane seem ed large in proportion. The multicolored multi-colored circle seemed about five or six times as large in diameter as the shadow. The cirle and shadow moved along al-ong with us for a few moments, and then as we passed beyond the clouds they vanished. GETS PROMOTION . . . Arv Rose tells me that his son-in-law, R. W. Brentlinger, has been promoted from Lieutenant to Capt. Brentlinger is communications officer of-ficer at Nellis AFB, Las Vegas, Nev. He is the husband of Arv's daughter, daugh-ter, Dixie. EARLY AIR RACE . . . The March Reader's Digest gives an interesting account of the first transcontinental air race, flown in 1911. The New York American offered offer-ed a $50,000 prize to the first person per-son to cross the nation by air, with the deadline October 10. Several Sev-eral hardy pioneer flyers started out bravely in Sept., a month ahead ah-ead of time, but only one finished, and he was nearly a month too late. . He was Calbraith Rodgers. His elapsed time was 49 days. The time of 49 days wasn't so slow when you consider that Rodgers Rod-gers rebuilt his airplane four times along the way. The only original parts still on at the finish were "the vertical rudder and the drip pan." While Rodgers missed the $50,000 prize because of the time limit, his sponsors paid him $20,000 and he earned another $4000 in stunting exhibitions along the way This money, however, did not pay his expenses, but he felt that the monetary consideration was secondary sec-ondary to his achievement. His flight made the nation air conscious. consci-ous. Flying was indeed hectic in those days. Among the troubles encountered encoun-tered by Rodgers and other contestants con-testants were these. A plane out of San Francisco, en countering side winds, spun into some trees. A search party located the pilot, Fowler, gazing at the wreckage in disgust. A plane's radiator boiled, and the engine overheated and stuck. A pilot named Ward had a devil of a .time. At 5000 ft. his engine almost wrenched loose. On landing land-ing he. found his oil cup and lubrication lub-rication gone. Frightened cows stampeded and drove the spectators directly into the path of a plane that was 'rising" 'ris-ing" - - taking off, to you. At one town people took parts off the plane for souvenirs. A woman wo-man unscrewing a nut said there were so many one shouldn't make any difference. A forced landing was necessary when a "propeller chain" snapped near El Paso, Texas. An eagle, resenting the new chal lenge to its domain chased a plane 20 miles, diving at it and damaging damag-ing the rudder wires. NEW INVENTIONS . . . Among the most interesting new developments announced this year is an automatic "assistant pilot" for helicopters. Designed by Sperry Gyroscope Co., it is said to make handling o'f helicopters in rough air as easy as flying a cub. Two new automatic anti-skid-ding devices for planes were announced an-nounced by officials at Wright Pat terson AFB. These are the West-inghouse West-inghouse "Decelostat", and the Boe ing "Hytrol". All B-47 and B-51 planes are now equipped with the devices, and other planes will be The devices are similar in action to the brake controls used on streamlined trains. They "sense"' a skid before it starts, and release brake pressure enough to prevent it. Thus maximum traction is main tained, and locking of the wheels prevented, regardless of brake pres sure applied by the pilot. The result re-sult is that the landing roll for deceleration de-celeration is reduced to near the theoretical minimum. |