"Cloud-Seeding?" Could This have anything to do with Chem-Trails?

NOTE: The name of one of the victims and owner of Advanced Aviation Specialists, Al Redic k, Had to be edited because the forum software deemed the last name "naughty" So the last name should read Redic k without the space between the c and the k. Silly machines.....

http://www.rgj.com/news/stories/reno/956031242.html

By Anjeanette Damo RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL April 18th, 2000 Three people died Monday morning in the fiery crash of a World War II-era airplane that plunged to the ground minutes after taking off from Reno-Stead Airport on a cloud-seeding mission. Witnesses said the Grumman S2 Tracker owned by Advanced Aviation Specialists appeared to have engine trouble shortly after it took off to the west at 10:30 a.m. The plane completed a half circle to the north, apparently trying to re-land after an engine failed but dove into the ground about a mile north of the airport.

“The plane had just taken off and came right back down to the ground,” Reno Fire Battalion Chief Mitch Glazner said.

The pilot and two passengers died on impact, officials said. Three yellow tarps covered the victims, each body about 20 feet apart in the smoldering wreckage. A pillar of black smoke in the sky above Stead drew rescuers from the nearby Nevada Air National Guard and the Reno police air hangar.

“It’s ugly,” said Washoe County Sheriff’s Deputy James McNeil, who hiked grim-faced through the sagebrush from the wreckage, unable to help the victims. McNeil had been working in the Reno police hangar where the sheriff’s office keeps its airplanes and helicopters.

Officials tentatively identified one victim as Al Redic k, owner of Advanced Aviation Specialists, the company that conducts aerial cloud-seeding operations for the Desert Research Institute. The other two victims also were employees of Advanced Aviation Specialists and not DRI, spokesman John Doherty said.

He said an engine failed shortly after takeoff.

Employees at the Nevada Cloud Seeding Program hangar declined to comment Monday.

“We just lost three very good friends today and we are all upset,” said Tom Swafford, principal research technician for DRI.

This was the second year DRI used the S2 Tracker, which contained two seeding generators, small burners filled with a silver iodide solution, and had equipment to measure air temperature and water content of the clouds. The team was scheduled Monday to seed clouds in the Walker and Carson river basins south of Lake Tahoe.

“The plane was a real workhorse, but when an engine goes, there’s not much you can do,” Doherty said.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the cause of the crash. Early reports said an engine had failed at takeoff. The pilot did not make any radio contact before the crash, said airport spokesman Adam Mayberry.

The Stead airport does not have a manned control tower.

DRI has conducted about seven aerial seeding operations this winter. The crash put an end to the program for the rest of the season, said Arlen Huggins, associate research scientist and director of the cloud seeding program.

“We have to reassess how we will handle it next winter,” he said.

Redic k, who specialized in the restoration of World War II vintage fighter aircraft, started Classics in American Aviation at the Stead airport in 1983, after moving to Reno 18 months earlier. His sons eventually took over that business and Redic k started Advanced Aviation Specialists.

Redic k was discharged from the Air Force in 1956 as a mechanic and worked for a commercial airline. Over the years, he became interested in World War II fighter planes, coming to Reno from Southern California to put a P-3 fighter sold from the Harrah’s collection into airworthy condition.

He also became involved in the filming of several motion pictures, overseeing the maintenance of the aircraft in the television series “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and acting as a consultant in the 1997 summer blockbuster “Con Air.”

Redic k’s friend Ron Steele, a retired Federal Aviation Administration supervisor, said that Redic k knew his stuff when it came to maintaining and restoring airplanes. Before he retired, Steele flight checked Redic k’s planes, including the S2 that crashed.

“I’ve given many check rides in that airplane and it is capable of doing the job of what they are doing out there,” Steele said. “It’s hard to say why it plunged to the ground.”

The S2 is the second plane in 20 years to crash while on a DRI weather mission. In 1980, a B-26 Temop II on a research mission exploded seconds before it crashed near Bald Mountain in the Sierra southwest of Lake Tahoe, killing two DRI scientists and two pilots.

The victims in that crash included research engineer Peter Wagner, husband of former assemblywoman, state senator and lieutenant governor Sue Wagner. Also killed were pilot John Lapham, a former board chairman of the Reno National Championship Air Races; William Gaskell, an assistant research professor, and co-pilot Gordon F. Wicksten.

DRI has been seeding clouds since the 1960s to augment mountain snowpack and does so during Sierra storms to increase snowfall and build water supplies for the summer irrigation season.