Page 6, Watt Craven Highlights, June IT. 1982
Vancebord Men Fly For Fun
Downtown Vanceboro from 1200 feet up
In some people’s mind nothing beats the freedom
found in flying.
Just a short 12 minute circling over the Vanceboro
area at 1200 feet and you see well organized rows of
tobacco, soy beans and corn, stitched into the soil with
arrow-straight perfection.
The tall green trees become like thick masses of
jungle and local streams like the Swift and Palmetto
almost seen to be tributaries of the Amazon.
There are three men in the Vanceboro area that get
to see these sights almost anytime they want.
George Ewell, Woody Copeland, and Royce Jordan
are all flyers and realized that individually they
couldn’t afford a plane so they got together and
formed an informal flying club and they now own a
couple of Cessnas collectively.
If its Saturday, Sunday, or a holiday and the three
boys are not out fishin’ fresh or salt water, then you’ll
probably find them hanging around the airstrip
about a mile north of Vanceboro on the left side of
Route 43.
They go flying whenever they take the notion.
George said, “I fly a plane the way some people go
out in their boat. I’ve been flying since 1956 and it
don’t cost no more to operate a small plane than it
does to operate a 15 foot, 55 horsepower boat.”
The farthest George flew in one trip, to his
recollection, was to Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The three boys have a small 4 cyclinder, 2-seater,
100 horsepowered Cessna 150 that costs about p2
per hour to operate at a cruising speed of 100 miles
per hour, not counting pushing or pulling by the
wind.
They also have a bigger 6 cylinder, 4-seater, 230
horsepowered Cessna 182 which costs about $25 per
hour to operate.
Woody points out the difference between the small
and big Cessna, “When I fly to visit my brother in
Jasper, Alabama or my mother in Wilsonville,
Alabama, it takes 6^ hours and $78 worth of gas in
the Cessna 150 or I can take the Cessna 182 in 4'/^
hours and $112. Its a matter of time or money.”
As George and Woody were wiping off the
windshield of the Cessna 150 with a special gelatin
made to clean plexiglass, Royce drives up the dirt
trail leading to the hanger area.
He gets out and looks the sky over once, “The
weather’s just right today with this front cornin’
through and the wind’s cornin’ down the runway
from the west. This front is a mixture of cumulus and
moisture-laden clouds at about 1500 feet. Its gonna
be bumpy below the clouds and just as smooth as you
could want it above them.”
Royce appears to be the crack weatherman of the
group.
Soon the talk turns from flying to fishing.
Woody states, “The best fishing close by now is
around Aurora where the water stays clear. What’s
biting up there now is bass, white and yellow perch,
and brim.
George overhears Woody’s list and responds,
“You’ll have to prove it by me!”
Apparently the fish are not biting for George.
Interesting pattern formed by The Oaks Apts
BACK IN THE HANGAR AGAIN-Woody
Copeland of the Vanceboro Informal Flying Club,
ties a rope to the wing hook of his Cessna 150 to secure
the plane in a strong wind. A small tornado hit the
hanger shed about PA years ago, tearing tin off the
shed & snapping lumber but no damage to the plane.
Vanceboro Fisherman Reveals ^
Where They Are Now Biting “
James “Pete” White, retired mailman, of
Vanceboro, did something the other day a lot of
fisherman won’t do.
He revealed the precise location of his favorite
fishing spot.
Of course, the important facts come along with all
the details of Pete’s most recent expedition.
Pete, Kenneth Fornes, and Ronald Taylor all left
Vanceboro Sunday morning with Ron’s 24-foot
Penyan (cutty cabin included)and headed up U. S. 13
to the Chesapeake Bay where they put in at Bubba’s
Marina on Lynnhaven Inlet, Va.
Earlier they had picked up Pete’s son, James Jr., in
Greenville.
Using spots, croakers, and anything else they could
catch for live bait, the four men got the Penyan out^
there for the first change of the tide and found thJQl
fish biting with every outgoing tide thereafter.
By Monday night they had reeled in 69 gray trout
that went from 5H pounds up to 12 pounds, three
large bluefish, and a lot of small dogfish shark. All
the fish good for eating were brought back and put in
a freezer.
“Four people can fish quite comfortably on the
Penyan and we were using ambassador reels with 25
pound test lines and about a 6 to 8 ounce weight
because of the strong current. We needed the heavy
weight to get the lines down into 60-feet deep water,”
explains Pete.
Now Pete reveals the exact location:
“Its 18 miles across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-
Tunnel and we went out 12 miles from the inlet on the
southwest side to the fourth island.
“The fish are really biting up around that fourth
island and now is the time to go. I have a friend who
went out the next day after seeing our catch and he
and another man put 22 fish in the boat in 2}^ hours.
“But you’ve got to have an outgoing tide because
you won’t catch a thing on the incoming tide and you
want to be off the west side and kinda close to that
fourth island but not directly over the tunnel leading
out from it or you’ll get hung up in them 35-foot deep
rocks, to be sure.”
“There’s also been some catchin’ at the second
island.”
Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician, scientist,
and religious writer, is credited with building the
first mechanical computer in 1644.
The cocoon of a single silkworm can yield up to
1,000 yards of silk thread, the National Geographic
Society says.
At Verkhoyansk and Oymyakon in Soviet Siberia,
temperatures dip to minus 96 F, or minus 71 C,
making them the coldest towns in the world, the
National Geographic Society says.
South-Swimming Bacteria Found For First Time
WASHINGTON—It’s been confirmed. Lowly
bacteria have a sense of direction just like the birds
and bees.
Various bacteria found in the Southern
Hemisphere in muddy sediments under both fresh
and salt water near Christchurch, New Zealand, and
Hobart, Australia, swim in a southerly direction
using the earth’s magnetic field for orientation. This
is the first time south-swimming bacteria have been
reported. Bacteria that always head north were
discovered in the Northern Hemisphere in 1975.
Compasses Inside
A team of scientists has verified that like their
counterparts in the Northern Hemisphere, the
bacteria down under contain tiny bits of magnetite.
An iron oxide, the substance acts as an internal
compass for the bacteria.
The ancients called magnetite lodestone and used
it to make ships’ compasses.
The scientists who discovered the south-swimming
bacteria in New Zealand and Australia include
Richard P. and Nancy A. Blakemore, University of
New Hampshire; Richard B. Frankel,
By Donald J. Frederick
National Geographic News Service
Massachusetts Institute of Technololy; and Adrianus
J. Kalmijn, Woods Hole Oceonographic Institution.
Their work has ben supported by the National
Geographic Society, the National Science
Foundation, and the Office of Naval Research.
“We believe that bacteria in both hemispheres use
the earth’s magnetic field to find their most suitable
habitat, the muddy sediments below,” explained the
scientists. “It’s a unique and biologically
advantageous response that may also have far-
reaching implications in fields such as biology,
physics, and medicine.”
In the Southern Hemisphere, swimming south also
means swimming “down.” At the latitude of
Christchurch, for instance, the vertical componentof
the earth’s magnetic field is larger than the
horizontal. Since the bacteria in the water are too
small to distinguish up from down based on gravity,
their built-in compasses steer them southward but,
more important, downward to their preferred
habitats. Similary, in the Northern Hemisphere
swimming north means swimming down.
Birds and Bees
The evidence that bacteria in both hemispheres
can sort out directions using their own compasses has
far-reaching biological implications. For years
scientists have suspected that many animals may be
using the earth’s magnetic field to orient theinselves
on long migrations, or even on short trips from a
home base. '
Recently, other researchers found magnetite in
pigeon skulls and in the abdomens of bees. Both
creatures have extraordinary homing ability.
So far few studies have been undertaken to
determine how much if any magnetite might be
contained in the human body and what role it might
play there. But if an organism as simple as a
bacterium can produce its own magnetite, why can’t
humans, ask the scientists.
As for the “magnetotactic” bacteia, their highly
efficient compass needles may be of enormous value
to modern technology and medicine someday. Drugs
might be attached to magnetite particles extracted
from the bacteria and steered through the
bloodstream to the exact source of a disease by using
special magneto outside the body.
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