Fog cheated all of us out of an airplane ride today. In the wee, early morning, still squinting through sleepy eyes, I headed for Municipal airport. The new taxiways have been roughed-in by bulldozers and I wanted all of us to get the picture from the air. Two blocks from home I realized my eyes weren't going to see any better--it was fog, not sleep, that had drawn its impenetrable mantle across our vision.

Low-down clouds were hugging the earth for warmth.

From the ground, however, Municipal is solid confusion. The method behind the madness of the big earth-moving machines is not apparent until seen from overhead. Three giant runways, 150 feet wide and approximately 2,500 feet long, criss-cross the airport. One runs due north and south. The second runs east and west and the third from northeast to southwest.

Most of the improvement money is hidden from view. Long strings of tremendous tile have been buried beneath these runways. They will literally suck the moist earth dry during rainy weather, dumping the water where it will do no harm.

 

Some of the high spots in these runways have been sliced off and pushed into the low spots, tending to level the usable surface of the field.

Running parallel to the runways now, are fresh, brown taxi-strips, whacked out of the sod, graded and leveled. Every few feet, these taxiways connect with the runways, so planes can duck off the runways quickly. If you would magnify a street with sidewalks along one side, that would be the picture. Planes will land and take off on the runway, or street portion, will taxi to and from on the taxi-ways or sidewalks.

Starting next week, they will be hauling gobs of gravel onto the field, then will come the blacktopping of the north-south runway, which will assure all-weather, all-season operation. If the wires at both ends of the north-south runway were moved to other locations, even the biggest plane could use this runway.

Those wires at least on the south side of the field, should be moved before some low-approaching plane gets a hot-foot.

Airport manager, Joe Carlin has acquired a complete set of portable lights for night-flying, but these hazards must either be removed, or lights placed atop each pole, before night-flying can be safely accomplished at Warsaw Municipal airport.

In scanning the latest edition of one of the national flying magazines, this interesting letter crops up. It is written by a fellow called Captain John P. Doswell, which I figure is none other than Warsaw's Jack Doswell, who is a reserve captain and an instructor.

"As an instructor, I have found the discussion on stall warning devices unusually interesting. We have equipped all our planes with the instrument, and in my own case, I have found it has made me more aware of my control application and consequently smoother than I have been in the past."

Sky Writing has long advocated this compulsory installation of stall-warning devices on all new aircraft before they are licensed and on all old aircraft before they are re-licensed.

That beating roar you hear when an airplane passes overhead is not the motor, but sound created when a fast-moving propeller takes a healthy whack at the air as it goes 'round and round.' Coming to the forefront is a new type noiseless prop of perhaps four blades, operating at a much slower speed and silently. Folks on the ground would appreciate that improvement and it's coming, sure as shootin'.

Warsaw Daily Times, Fri. Apr. 30, 1948

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