Although the Air Force and Navy have different methods of flying into tropical storms, there are certain dangers that are common to both systems. Ahead of time, the pilots and others make a last-minute check to see that the crew are prepared. They also check instruments, lights, pitot and carbureter heat, safety belts, power settings, emergency equipment, current for communications and radar, and other things. In flight, the pilot does not use the throttle unnecessarily, but chiefly to maintain air speed. Actually it may be said that there are three pilots. The third one, sometimes known as “George,” is the auto-pilot, which may do most of the flying, except in rough weather and in landing and take-off. Keeping the plane on course on a long flight would be very tiring otherwise. The limits of air speed vary. In the B-29’s, which have been used generally for Air Force hunting, the limits are between 190 and 290 miles an hour, roughly. Air-speed readings may be affected by heavy rain. Also, increased humidity of the air will result in an increase in fuel consumption. There are numerous other items on the list of things that may cause trouble. But the pilots are highly competent and thoroughly trained and experienced before being put on the hurricane detail. The radio operator, of course, is fully occupied and seldom has much time to see what is going on in the weather. He has two main troubles. One is static. When it is bad, all he can do is send a message blind and ask the ground station to wait. This may last for an hour or more. Various devices are used to reduce static interference but without complete success. As soon as the plane starts bouncing around, he has difficulty keying the message, not only because his body is shaking and swaying, but because it produces variations in the transmitter voltage and, on very high frequency, a drop below a certain critical voltage is likely to render the equipment inoperative. To overcome a little of the trouble from turbulence, some radio operators in the early days tried strapping one arm to the desk, but one radio man, having just experienced a rough flight, said in his report that his arm didn’t do a very good job unless he was there! Besides, he needed the arm to hold on with. More recently, it has been necessary to carry two radio men, and in fact this has become standard practice in most areas in the last year or two. It is very seldom that communications fail entirely but a plane on a storm-hunting mission that was out of contact with the ground station for much over an hour usually returned to base. Some aircraft on storm missions carry extra receivers and transmitters.