The White Falcon - 29.01.1971, Page 1
New CONUS toll call facility opens on February 1
A stateside toll calling fa-
cility will open on February 1,
and the facility will be avail-
able to all personnel assigned to
the area.
The service will be located in
bldg. 839, with the following
hours of operation:8 p.m. through
10 p.m. on weekdays; and from
1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and from 6 p.m.
to 10 p.m. on weekends and holi-
days.
The rate for a station to sta-
tion call will normally be $12
for the first three minutes and
$4 for each additional minute to
anyplace in the continental U.S.
Charges for the call will be
computed at the time of the call,
and the caller will then have 15
days to pay his bill at the Amer-
ican Express Bank.
The facility may be used as
often as desired. For further
Information call the telephone
officer at Ext. 4143.
THE WHITE FALCON
Vol. XXV, No. 7 U.S. Naval Station, Keflavik, Iceland Jan. 29, 1971
The crash that wasn’t heard ‘round the world..
.«
Maiden flight of ‘White Falcon’ ends in disaster
It was a happy day, last Fri-
day when the White Falcon receiv-
ec a call concerning Chief Robert
N. Hayden, a model airplane en-
thusiast from VP-56. He had
built a white model plane and
called it the "White Falcon."
What was happier still, our pho-
tographer was invited to see the
maiden flight of the "Ringmaster"
aircraft... What can you say
when someone christens his model
plane after your paper?
The photographer donned his
camera and went to shoot the
white bird, and
found on arrival
that a dozen peo-
ple had come to
witness the maid-
en event.
Chief Hayden
prepared the
Ringmaster (mod-
ified and stunt
flying) and posi-
tioned it for
the planned five
minute flight in
which it would
soar50 feet into
the noon sky.
Fire one .35
hp Fox gasoline-
powered recipro-
cating engine,
the 42 inch wing-
span trembles,
and voila, the
White Falcon is
in the air with
Chief Hayden at
the control.
The plane buzzed aboutin small
circles while the photographer
tried to catch the moving target
inhis camera sites. Click! Focus
again. Click, click.
But misfortune stuck its nose
into a perfectly sucessful hap-
pening. The WhiteFalcon sputter-
ed at an altitude of 50 feet and
plummeted to the snow covered
ground in a steep power dive from
which it never recovered. The
snow was not nearly enough cushion
to avoid contact with the hard
surface below, and the White Fal-
con crumpled into a rather un-
orthodox design — an aerodynam-
ic disaster.
As happenstance would have
it, the photographer ran out of
film about the time the pi erne
started to make its fatal dive,
and no picture of the crash is to
be had. Documentation of the
incident is lost forever, but the
White Falcon will rise again —
and has.
of the White
Falcon crash is
as follows: It
has been exactly
seven days since
the mangled
plane lay on the
rocks. It is
again the modi-
fied "Ringmas-
ter" it was, but
now the words
Mason-Dixie line
spread over its
body.
There is no
proposed date
for the flying
of the rebuilt
plane, but hope-
fully its voyage
will happen with-
out the unexpect-
ed complications
that intervened
at high noon
last Friday.
The epilogue
ADJC Robert N. Hayden built a model plane called the White Falcon and
with an assistant, AN Steven M. Trager, put the ill-fated Ringmaster
into the air last Friday. The plane crashed shortly after take-off.