Lincoln Journal Star from Lincoln, Nebraska • 57

World's Top Test Pilots Are Part of Very Special Breed 'If I had told Edwards Air Force $unku Imtntnl uttfi friar NATIONAL By Kay Bartlett Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP) -They milled around the lobby of the hotel, waiting for the Gray Line bus just like any other conventioneers. They wore leisure suits and sports jackets, shook hands with old friends and were introduced to new ones. Tall and short, some balding, some with glasses, they could have been insurance salesmen, bank tellers or Fuller Brush men. But among this group, there was the first man who ever flew the Boeing 747, some of the men who will fly America's space shuttle for the first time, and a man who survived when his reconnaissance plane broke apart at 78,000 feet.

That's not to mention the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound, the first man to take the B-l, the controversial supersonic bomber, into the air, and the German test pilot whose job it was during World War II to Ujke every captured allied plane into the air to see what it would do. The German, Hans-Werner Lerche, no longer a test pilot, worked on pure instinct, of course, with no manuals. These ordinary looking men the world's top test pilots (past and present) gathered here recently for the 20th annual meeting of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots (SETP), a very special international club with 1,400 members. Meet, for instance, Bill Weaver, a rather good-looking 47-year-old blond who is at the moment discussing how to sell one home and buy another. Weaver, a test pilot for Lockheed, is also one of the luckiest men who ever lived.

He was testing the SR-71, America's super reconnaissance Base I was going to crash at such and such a place at such and such a time, they couldn't have gotten there faster." The rancher had been branding colts when, he heard a tremendous explosion too high to see. But he kept watching the sky and when the parachutes popped open, he jumped in his helicopter and went to greet them. Weaver had a cut on his nose. The other man, however, had broken his neck on the way out of the Blackbird and had drifted lifelessly to the ground. The rancher insisted upon taking Weaver to a hospital.

"I don't know anything about helicopters, but I could see the red line, the safe mark, was 85 miles an hour and we were going well above that." A test pilot thinks long and hard about a man who is killed when he is at the controls. No Time To Warn Him "Afterwards, I kept thinking of what I could have done differently, that would have saved him. But I knew there was nothing. I didn't have time to warn him." And the difference between test pilots and you and I is that Bill Weaver was back in the cockpit one week later, thundering another Blackbird into the atmosphere. Times have changed, but test pilots are still a special breed.

In one breath they deny it. They boast that they are pretty dull, that they spend most of their time on the ground laboriously working with the flight engineer on design and construction. They say it's not all that dangerous anymore, although the insurance companies don't buy that story. The test pilots all know a close friend or a colleague who has bought it while flying. And when IE ty.

Many continue as test pilots into their 50s. And their own philosophy of life is something called the "guts to brains ratio," but then you would have to be a test pilot to understand it. Test pilots earn from $25,000 to $70,000 a yesr with good fringe benefits. The first men to take the big planes off the ground thereby proving that the engineers were right also get nice bonuses. Jack Waddell, the first man to pilot the massive 747 down the runway and up and away, was rumored to have received He says it wasn't that much.

"Just say it was substantial. That would be accurate," says Waddell. That bonus is not just for the first flight it's for the rest of the testing, too, things like seeing how the plane recovers after a stall, how much faster it will go than the engineers say it should, and how many engines can be shut down in mid-flight without losing altitude. Bus Drivers Most of them could make more money by becoming commercial airline pilots, but that's not what they want to do. "The commercial airplane pilots are bus drivers 'compared with us," says Hank Hoffman, an Air Force major.

Test pilots in private industry say they pay 50'' more for insurance than the man who lives next door. Often, however, the companies pick up the difference or insure them heavily during their take-off to landing moments. Hollywood's top stunt pilot, Frank Tallman who was in attendance at the convention here, beat the system by insuring himself well before the insurance companies were quite so careful. Tallman, who is 57 and has a wooden leg, was seriously injured white doing the stunt flying for "The Great Waldo Pepper." But he lost his leg from an accident with his son's go-cart, not in a plane crash. The pilots downplay fear, preferring the word apprehension.

An exception is ex-NASA test pilot Milt Thompson. 50. He was frankly scared when he tested the X-15, a 4.000-mile-a-hour number that is more rocket than plane. He qualified his fear, saying he had not been in on the early testing and design and he felt he didn't know enough. "At that speed, it's a 15-minute flight," said Thompson.

"I just told myself it's all going to be over one way or another in 15 minutes." Everyone here has a good story, but one of the best belongs to Fox Stephens, whose name is synonymous with testing the Blackbird. The Fox, now a consultant in Washington for a German engine company, was flying AP NEAsFEATuRtl PMOTO Dick Hunt, chief engineering test pilot for American Jet Industries, Van Nuys, climbs down from the cockpit of an experimental Super Pinto jet. one day down to Mexico in a single engine four-seater without enough fuel and a Standard Oil Road Map as his chief navigational aid. This is the man the Air Force chose to test its most sophisticated reconnaissance craft, a tough, reliable, stable man, a man who plans ahead. Usually.

On this flight, he was heading for an unknown airport and Crossing Guard Keeps Traffic Light plane 1 nicknamed "The Blackbird, about 10 years ago when it suddenly flipped onto its back at 2,000 miles an hour flying at 78,000 feet, Weaver was simply thrown -from the plane as she broke apart. "I blacked out. I thought it was a bad dream. couldn't possibly be happening. If it had really happened, I couldn't survive.

"Then I thought I was dead. I was slightly euphoric. I remember thinking that I didn't know why everyone worried about death. It was sort of nice, I was Alive "Finally, I I was falling. I was alive.

I didn't even know what state I was over. I was making a tum when it came apart." The Blackbird can easily gobble up five states as it turns, can go from California to Florida in 45 minutes and shuttle from London to New York in an hour and a half. The mask on his pressurized astronaut's suit had iced over. He could see nothing. Finally, his parachute popped at 15,000 feet and Weaver floated down many miles from any sign of civilization.

"I was convinced I wouldn't be discovered for a long time," said Weaver. But he was thrilled when he saw another parachute floating down that of his systems controls analyst, the man who operates the sophisticated spy equipment. Weaver mentally reviewed his survival training, and frightened an antelope as he came down in what turned out to be a remote corner of New Mexico. As he was fighting with his parachute, a voice said: "Can I help you?" "There was this guy in this cowboy hat, straight out of a Marlboro ad," recounts Weaver. microwave and use it to power the fuel-hungry.

If the dream turns to reality, bright new constellations of power satellites may sparkle in the night sky sometime near the end of this century. Boeing experts say space power stations would be immensely expensive so much so, in fact, they hesitate to predict the multi-billion dollar cost. Returns unlawfully from the museum. The pieces a beaded Sioux war shirt and buffalo robe, an Oto buffalo robe and a buffalo-hide shield with eagle-feathered deerskin covers were the subject of a State Supreme Court motion for a summary judgment Castle five days ago as the vessel plowed toward South Africa at 21 knots. Somehow, she survived three hours in the shark-inhabited waters and 65-foot waves by swimming and floating.

And, in what Capt. Patrick St. Quentin Beadon called a "million to one chance," the Windsor Castle retraced its path and found Mrs. Fuller still treading water. As she stepped ashore, her only son, Dick, grabbed her and hugged her tightly.

Brushing aside reporters'hey drove to a Drexel, N.C. (AP Drexel's police chief, Bill Lippard, began his career in law enforcement as a crossing guard outside an elementary school. And when the state replaced Drexel's four traffic lights last August, Lip- November 7, 1878 one of this elite group goes down, the word flashes through this international before it ever comes out in the newspapers. In the next breath, they admit that they are the cream of the aviator crop. It's a highly competitive field and no matter how good you are, if you are out for a few years chances are you will never get back in.

This kind of flying, these reflexes, these nerves to react, must never be allowed to dull. They are far removed from the days when men in goggles and white scarves the fastest and bravest men on the race circuit were paid top dollar to try out new planes. Now, almost all test pilots have engineering backgrounds, many with advanced degrees in aeronautical engineering. They have almost all come up through the military, and they know' everything there is to know about a plane before they ever take it up. They have even adopted their own aphorism.

Sheer Boredom. Panic "To be a test pilot is to spend hours and hours of sheer boredom, followed by one moment of sheer panic." And their own gag definition of the ideal test pilot: "He should have 5,000 hours in the air, a masters degree in aeronautical engineering and be 21 years old." Most are in their late 20s before they have the experience and training to quali- A NEASFEATURES PHOTO to Study after that. "I am not going to tell you that power satellites are feasible," Boeing vice president Richard Taylor said earlier this year. "We think they may be, but this must be proved and it is' no easy job." The $970,000 study is financed jointly by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which awarded the contract, and the Energy The investigation has resulted in the dismissal of the museum's former director, Dr. Frederick J.

Dockstader, the resignations of six trustees and an inventory of the museum's four-million-piece collection. watched her step ashore. "I don't know why people do things like my wife did," he said. Friends said Mrs. Fuller was aq accomplished swimmer and tennis player and her stamina must have saved her.

According to the crew, she walked out of her cabin Monday morning in a nightgown and robe, apparently going to shower. Her husband reported her missing an hour later. Within minutes, Beadon had the vessel turned around and retracing its path, aided by bobbing beer cans and garbage scattered in its wake. VOWS aMMl f-tfaKiSM ''WYt Lit i 111 Priest Tired Of Turning Other Cheek The "Silver Fox," former tesi pilot Robert Stephens, stands beside an SR-71 reconnaissance plane, the "Blackbird." The Fox held all the Blackbird's early records, and recalls the time it tried to flip over on it's back. Government Awards Contract Building Solar Power Station Los Angeles (L'PI i The Rev.

Peter O'Sullivan. 66, a Catholic priest faced with a greedy robber, first turned the other cheek, as the Bible advises. But when he ran out of patience and cheeks to turn he clobbered the bandit. Father O'Sullivan was awakened in the rectory of St. John Baptist De La Salle church space power programs and seek ways to reduce the size of equipment that would be put in orbit.

Boeing and other aerospace firms have developed several concepts in the past several years for gathering the sun's boundless energy in space and beaming it to earth for use as electricity. Two of them: Orbiting a series of huge reflectors, covering perhaps 25 square miles, which would focus sunlight into a central furnace, low on fuel they were running. "Not to sweat," he kept repeating, fooling no one since his shirt was soaking wet. A buddy on the ground turned on the landing lights on his plane and then he talked the Fox down, with five minutes of fuel left. Fox maintained they still could have made it to the beach.

They went to see the beach the next day. Sheer granite cliffs rise straight up from the sea. Said LiDDard, now 52: "I worked the crossroad when some kids I know started the first grade. I've seen those same kids graduate and get married. This light just reminds me of all that." ner safe.

The exasperated priest turned and attacked the robber. The noise of the fight awakened a housekeeper, who ran into the street where a police car was passing. Jeffery Welch, 20, was arrested on suspicion of robbery and treated for bruises. in Orbit Electricity generated by the satellite would be turned into microwaves, beamed to antennas some five miles in diameter on earth, turned back into electricity and fed into the normal power grid. "Space-based solar energy never will be the entire energy answer," Taylor said.

But, he said, one day people on earth may gaze up at "a string of power satellites twinkling in the night sky." tant. A clay figure was bought for $800, the attorney general said, and once it had been given to the museum it was valued at $2,000. Later, Dockstader would ask Cavett which museum pieces he would like to change from so-called "loan" status to "gift" status. This was done in connection with Cavett's income tax' reports. One letter, attached to court papers, shows that gifts which' initially cost $17,700 when they were given to the museum, subsequently were valued at 735.

The papers charge: "Cavett's arrangement with Dockstader to obtain the artifacts from the museum were as follows: In exchange for 'donating' certain pre-Columbian artifacts to the Museum, Cavett received a full tax deduction on those Items, plus four Plains Indian artifacts, ie the war shirt, shield and shield cover, and two buffalo hides. This constitutes a double benefit clearly prohibited by law." presumed there was a city nearby. Wrong. He also figured that it would stay light a Little longer. Wrong.

The night was moonless and starless and the Fox couldn't find the gravel runway. "Not to sweat," the Fox told his companions. He said it was always possible to put the plane down on the beach where there is more light. The Fox alone knew just how oard bought the one that winked at the school crossing at Main and Bums for 39 years. It was installed in Lippard's front yard, and it blinks when the chief flips a switch inside his home.

by a burglar who held a knife to the priest's throat and said "Give me all the money I've killed before." Father O'Sullivan handed over $47. The robber demanded more, so the priest took another $647 out of the church safe. The bandit wanted still more, demanding the priest open an in heating gas to drive a turbine generator and produce electricity. Orbiting a huge field of solar cells that could transform sunlight directly into electricity. Both concepts call for putting the satellites in orbit about miles in space, where each" would hover over a single spot on earth.

Satellites would appear motionless when viewed from the ground and would be in sunlight of the time. January and is estimated to cost $100,000, is about one-third completed. It marks the first attempt to catalog the vast collection of Indian art and artifacts brought together early in this century by George G. Heye, an engineer who built a fortune out of his Standard Oil Co. investments.

The collection, which includes hundreds of thousands of arrowheads, as well as priceless pre-Colombian gold statuary, is regarded by art historians and anthropologists as the most comprehensive in its field. No attempt has ever been made to assess its monetary value. According to court papers filed by the attorney general's office, Cavett's dealings with the museum and Dockstader went like this: Dockstader would show interest in a piece that a dealer had usually an item of pre-Columbian art and would notify Cavett's accountant. Value Hiked The dealer would deliver the piece to the museum and pick up a check from A single orbiting station might be up to nine miles across, generating as much electricity as several nuclear power plants, and ultimately there might be up to 30 such stations in space, they say. But the experts also believe power satellites could pay for themselves if, as Boeing predicts, conventional fuel costs increase more than 30 in the next decade and more slowly Washington (UPI) The government is spending almost a million dollars to lock for the best way of building solar power stations in orbit and beaming vast amounts of electricity back to earth.

The multi-agency contract awarded to Boeing Aerospace Co. launches the most serious study yet of how to tap the sun's energy 23,000 miles out in space, beam it earthward by Cavett By Fred Ferretti (c) New York Times New York Dick Cavett has returned to the Museum of the American Indian four artifacts that the state attorney general's office charged he had obtained Indian Museum Artifacts, New York Drops Suit Research and Development Administration. Boeing won over two other firms Rockwell and Grumman to get the award. The contract is split into two phases. During the first five months Beoing will examine the selec-1 tion of solar energy conversion techniques and ttie location of their construction in space.

In the final seven months the company will try to compute as precisely as possible the costs of Last July, in demanding the return of the Indian pieces, Asst. Atty. Gen. Joel Cooper, who directed the state investigation, accused Cavett of "a reckless indifference to the legality of his transactions when the law clearly requires a much higher stan- "She was about 70 yards from the ship when we found her," he said. Four lifebelts were tossed out, but she missed them all.

"She didn't lose heart as we passed her," Beadon said. "When the ship was turned once more, it came up to about 30 yards from the victim. A lifeboat lowered and a rope thrown to her. "There was a look of utter relief," a crew member said, "and as she was pulled on to the lifeboat naked she fainted." Her husband said, "It was a nightmare. I don't want to talk about it." Mystery Surrounds Woman's Fall from Ocean Liner against Cavett that was sought by Atty.

Gen. Louis J. Lef-nowitz's office last July. The court action grew out of the office's two-year investigation of the museum's deacces-sion, investment and financial policies. local hospital.

The captain refused to say whether Mrs. Fuller jumped or fell overboard. "I am satisfied she was not pushed," Beadon said. "But that's a subject I will not discuss farther." Still on board looking after the baggage, Mrs. Fuller's husband, Leslie, 71, irately told reporters not to invade his privacy.

He said his wife had suffered a breakdown and "goes to pieces" whenever her ordeal is discussed. He shook his head slowlv as he dard of conduct." Cavett, through his lawyer, resisted until Thursday. Then he returned the pieces, they were picked up by a museum representative at the former Nebraskan's apartment and taken to the museum's Bronx research annex. On Monday, as part of the return agreement, the attorney general's office and Landers will exchange stipulations in State Supreme Court Cavett will attest to the return and Cooper will agree to drop the motion. A spokesman for Lefkowitz refused to comment on the arrangement, except to confirm that the four items had been returned and that a court appearance was scheduled Monday.

Landers also confirmed, the return and said: "Next week Mr. Cavett will have a full statement on the matter." Investigation Continues Meanwhile, the investigation of the museum goes on. The inventory, was begun in Port Elizabeth, South Africa (UPI) Margaret Fuller stepped ashore Saturday "happy to be alive" but with mystery still surrounding her fall from an ocean liner Into the sea and "million to one" rescue. "If only I didn't have to face all those people down there," she murmured as she was helped down the gangplank by ambulance attendants. "But it's all over.

I am so happy to be alive and home again." Somehow, the 64-year-old Mrs. Fuller plunged from the of the ocean jiner Windsor.