We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
Helnl Radio News Service
7/24/46
MYSTERIOUS WAVES FOUL UP ROBOT PLANES
Mysterious radio interference at the Navy*s Patuxent, Md. aircraft experimental center is fouling flight operations of new radio-controlled planes, John 0. Norris, a Washington Post reporter learned yesterday.
A Curtiss Helldiver and a Grumman F7F Tigercat, equipped with different types of radio-control equipment have been responding in unexpected ways to the button-pushers on the ground.
There have been no crack-ups, officials said, as the robot craft normally carry a pilot to grab the controls if anything goes wrong. However, a demonstration scheduled for today (Wednesday), in which it was planned to fly the planes without such a "safety pilot", had to be postponed. Officials in charge were afraid the craft might get out of control and crash somewhere in the wellpopulated middle-Atlantic area.
To date, Patuxent engineers are baffled by the trouble. Naval officers in Washington said that it is believed that the dif¬ ficulty is not sun spots or other natural phenomena.
What makes the nature of the interference so perplexing is that the radio-controls used on the planes employ many bands and many receivers one to turn the rudder, another to move the flaps, etc. Also one of the planes uses FM and another AM radio control.
The radio-controlled Tigercat developed by the Bell Air¬ craft Laboratories has been successfully flown in Buffalo, The Helldiver equipped with controls developed by the Naval Air Experi¬ mental Station has flown around Philadelphia without encountering the trouble.
At first the Patuxent engineers thought the interference was caused by some local installations. Careful checking seemed to rule this out. The best opinion is that the interference comes from an emergency network used by some Government agencies and some police bands which are Just below the frequencies assigned to the Navy radio-controlled air operations.
Some Naval communications experts believe that it is the proximity to Washington which is responsible. A decision was reach¬ ed late yesterday, it was learned, to test the planes at the Marine Air Station, Cherry Point, N. C. , which is remote from such possible interference.
It Is expected that the "nolo" demonstration without a safety pilot which w as scheduled for today at Patuxent, will be held at Cherry Point within a couple of weeks.
xxxxxxxxxx
12