The White Falcon

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The White Falcon - 30.10.1970, Blaðsíða 1

The White Falcon - 30.10.1970, Blaðsíða 1
THE WHITE FALCON Vol. XIII, No. 49 U.S. Naval Station, Keflavik, Iceland October 30, 1970 Jules Verne hut reads the sky's palm (Photo by AN Robin L. Wagner) Patrol Squadrons 49 and 56 will swap stations next week as the 49ers depart for their home base at Patuxent River, Md., and the first VP-56 planes from Pax River start arriving here. The exchange will be official next Friday, No- vember 6, when VP-56 skipper Cdr. Melvin Meltzer relieves 49's Cdr. Robert W. Wisdom. Cdr. StevenE. Kish is the executive officer for VP-56. The 56ers, who sport dragons on their planes, are no newcomers to the antisubmarine warfare busi- ness. They were the first squadron in the Navy to fly the P-3C, the newest and most advanced anti- submarine plane. The squadron's history goes back more than 20 years when it was commissioned Patrol Squadron 900 as part of the naval reserve program. After two name changes it was designated VP-56 in 1953. The squadron won the Battle Efficiency Pennant for patrol squadrons in July 1961 and was awarded the Capt. Isabell ASW Trophy for excellence in anti- submarine warfare that same year. The squadron received several well done's and a (See DRAGONS, Page 5) Woodpeckers fly home; Pax Dragons roar in rocket rising out of the land- scape. The strange building, a small but critical division of the Fleet Weather Facility, houses the radar and recording equip- ment necessary to collect data on upper atmos- phere wind ve- locity and di- rection, tem- perature, and humidity. RA- WINSONDE means radar, wind, sounding and ra- diosonde. The radar tracking equip- ment, covered by the odd sha- ped dome with portholes,picks up the signals emitted by a weather balloon launched from the base every six hours. The balloon carries a small battery-powered transmitter called a radiosonde that sends meterological data to the seven Navy weathermen and their Icelandic counterparts who man Bldg. 187 around-the-clock. A typical weather balloon is filled with helium and blows up to about six feet in diameter be- fore it is ready to be released. The balloon liftoffs are staged from Bldg. T-50 located across the field from RAWINSONDE. Because of the change in air pressurefrom sea level to the up- per atmosphere, the balloon may have expanded to 100 feet in di- ameter by the time it has climb- ed to 100,000 feet. It's skin will have stretched so tight that the rubber shell will be no fat- ter than one-one hundredth the thickness of a paycheck. When the balloon finally (See JULES, Page 3) On a base spotted with quonset huts and marked by a lack of dis- tinctive architecture, the RAW- INSONDE Building, near the Youth Center, looks like a Jules Verne

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