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Show DEATH RIDES A GLIDER . . . The Delta Airport teletype brought brou-ght in a message last week stating that a glider from Bishop airport which had been missing for several days was found Dec. 20, demolish-1 ed four miles NE of Independence, Calif. Name of the pilot was Ov-gard. Ov-gard. Wallace Stephenson returned to Los Angeles Monday, after spending spend-ing a short vacation with his mother, mo-ther, Lucille Stephenson, here. He is employed by NAVION in LA building F-86 Sabre Jets. i Win go vers All The News' That's Fit To , ' Print - From The Delta Airport. By Dick Morrison S TAKE OFFS AND LANDINGS . . . Nate Ward tells me that he pas-" pas-" sed the CAA exam for Combined Operations Chief, a new piosition for head of combined tower and communications services now in effect at some airports. Nate flew Ji" to Los Angeles by Western Airlines on Dec. 16 for this purpose, and took the exam at CAA headquarters headquar-ters on Manchester Blvd., near the s, International Airport. J Don Bothwell made his dual XC last Friday, in the Champ, with stops at Salt Lake and Provo. Vern Penrose of Kemp & Kelsey Air Service set his Cessna down here Sunday, out of Salt Lake. Ron Morley practiced dual pylon ! '.' 8's high altitude emergency land-ings, land-ings, and cross control stalls Sun-' Sun-' day. Golden Warnick was sure to do it again sooner or later. He had not been up for a while, but the J immnrtal longing was in his blood of the passengers, who were civil- tZZT- who had the misf'- a .glfted Playwright might have written a thriller based on the situat with some o the acters involved. BABY RECOVERING . . . Two m0nth old Deborah K daughter of Max and Maggie Kay is reported to be recovering from Se""s case Pneumonia, in the Fillmore hospital, Sunday night. Deborah's older sister, Pat is also recovering from an attack of pleurisy. Both of the Kay children child-ren have been very sick, but as this is written are doing as well as could be expected. RESEARCH AT BISHOP . . . I called at the Bishop, Calif., airport on the morning of Dec. 7, and met Bob Symons, the noted glider pilot, and his associate, Dr. Joachim Keuttner German scientist. It was these men who set the altitude alt-itude record for two place gliders last March 5, when they soared to 33,650 ft. in their Pratt-Read sailplane. sail-plane. A picture of them was published pub-lished in this column May 17, as was a noteworthy aerial photo by Symons, which showed the specac-ular specac-ular updraft that rises above the Owens Valley, known as the Sierra Wave. Symons and Keuttner are engaged engag-ed in research work concerned with air currents. This work is being done in cooperation with UCLA and Inyokern Naval Ordinance Test Station, among others. Symons Sy-mons told me that the results of their scientific work will be published. pub-lished. In addition to setting glider altitude al-titude records and carrying on a commercial flying service, Symons does cloud seeding, for which purpose pur-pose he uses a P-38. In view of the conflict of opinion as to the effectiveness o! cloud seeding, I was very much interested in what he told me about it. The U. S. Weather Bureau has taken a highly high-ly skeptical attitude toward rain making, yet proponents of the idea are enthusiastic about it. It has been almost impossible to prove that rain making efforts actually caused more precipitation that rain making efforts actually caused cau-sed more precipitation than would have otherwise fallen. In this respect, Symons' cloud seeding work is unique. He is employed em-ployed by a California electric co., a privately owned utility, to seed the clouds in specific areas over the Sierra Nevada mountains, where the company has complete and detailed precipitation records which cover a long period of years. This makes it possible to check the results of cloud seeding not only against accurate records for past years, but also to seed specific spec-ific localized areas and check the result, it seems reasonable to expect ex-pect that accurate data on the efficacy ef-ficacy of cloud seeding can be obtained. ob-tained. Symons uses dry ice when it is necessary for him to fly above the clouds, and silver iodide when he can fly under them. He says that' too much of either will cancel out the rain making effect. The trick is to get just the right amount, in the place where it is wanted. He considers aerial application much more accurate and effective than use of ground generators. The latter, lat-ter, he believes, may put too much iodide near the generator, and so cancel out the effect in nearby areas, yet cause rain in unpredictable unpredic-table places hundreds of miles away. aw-ay. However that may be, his work for the private utility company should produce factual data proving pro-ving or disproving the efficacy of aerial application. He says that the reason the utility company hires him to make rain for them is that they figure it pays. Back to the subject of glider flying, fly-ing, I asked him if he still aimed to make 80,000 feet in a glider, an objective which some of the Owens Ow-ens Valley flyers have talked about. ab-out. He said yes. It will be a neat trick if he can do it. ij and he took off Sunday in the e. Champ. He really had himseli i ls time in three dimensions doing Chandelles, 720's and spots, ii Helen and Melvin West flew a j. Luscombe in from San Diego Satur day. They are spending the Xmas holidays with Helen's parents, Mr. (I and Mrs. Heber Bishop. Helen is a $ bookmaker's bookkeeper; or, more accurately, she worked as an accountant ac-countant at Santa Anita last sum- mer. TRANSPORT DOWN . . . A passenger transport out of Los Angeles circled Salt Lake airport for an hour, about midnight, Dec. 16, then, unable to land because of the storm flew back to Delta and set down here about 0230. The crew expected to tie down for the night, but an hour after the landing, land-ing, the pilot got word via CAA communications to take off for Las Vegas. With the help of Leo Burraston, the crew cleaned snow and ice off the wings, took on 400 gallons of gas, rounded up such of their passengers as they could find, and took off. It is understood that the plane was ordered to Las Vegas because the airline has good service facilities facil-ities there, whereas if it had stayed stay-ed in Delta few hours the job of getting the super cooled engines started again would have been ardous and expensive. WHEEI THE PEOPLE1 I 1 ' Nobe Peterson holds some strong opinions about what he called a group of "hopheads, perverts and screwballs" who gave him a bad time in the wee small hours the other night. Some of the passengers passen-gers of a grounded airliner, who need not be identifield here sought lodgings at his hostelry. This, of course, was not Nobe's fault. He did the best he could for them. ' One man was in such a disorganized disor-ganized state that he sought a local doctor for a very special prescription. pre-scription. A woman got hold of the telephone, called her boy friend collect, and talked for an full hour. The call was long distance to New York. Another man got mad at the woman for monopolizing monopol-izing the phone. Of course this is no indictment of the majority |