| Summary: | Alaskan Pilot Doesn't Want Mercury Rise: Joe Crosson Needs Snow For His Ski Landing Experiments Here. ALASKAN PILOT DOESN'T WANT MERCURY RISE Joe Crosson Needs Snow for His Ski Landing Experiments Here. The Spokane Chamber of Commerce could do a city visitor a favor today by not wishing for spring weather. Joe Crosson, chief pilot for Pacific-Alaska Airways, hopes that snow-covered Felts field will remain a section of Alaskan territory until he has tested some new landing skis for the department of commerce to prove under actual flying conditions similar to Alaska that the new equipment is satisfactory. KEEP BUSY Crosson and a crew of Northwest Airlines mechanics were busy today removing the wheels from the Lockheed Electva plane he flew to Spokane from Seattle Monday and attaching the new type skis in their place. The work was cione in the national guard hangar at Falts field. Crosson said that it would take an entire day to attach the skis. Wednesday lie will make a series of test landings on the crusted snow under various loads. He hopes that the snow will not get soft. The field was in nearly perfect shape for the tests today, he said. PAID VISIT Murray Hall, a department of commerce engineer from Inglewood, Calif., where Lockheed planes are manufactured, and Del Valle, a Pan-American Airways representative from California, are I with Crosson. The plane being tested with the skis was flown from Alaska by Crosson to the California factory for overhauling last fall. The two men accompanied him on the flight north last week. Laboratory tests proved the new skis, but actual demonstrations under regular loads are required by the department of commerce. If the skis pass the tests here, Hall will give them the department's approval. AIRWAY OFFICER . Valle is interested in the demonstration as a Pan-American Airways officer. Pacific-Alaska Airways is a subsidiary of Pan-American. The new skis are all-metal, stream-lined and about eight feet long and 21 inches wide. The tail is smaller. They were developed by the Lockheed company. ASSIST PILOT Northwest Airlines gave Crosson assistance with the mechanical details of the test because the Lockheed Electra 10-passenger transport is the same type used by the company. Crosson said he would return to Seattle as soon as the tests were made and from the coast city he would return to Fairbanks, Alaska. Skis are used on the Pacific-Alaskan planes several months each year, he said. He has been chief pilot of the company since it began four years ago. PILOTED PLANE Twelve planes offer year-around service between Fairbanks and Bethel, Nome and Juneau. Crosson piloted the plane that carried the bodies of Will Rogers and Wiley Post from Anchorage to the United States after the fatal accident last August. His home is at Fairbanks.
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