Word: statical
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Another investigation he took part in had equally obvious immediate practical results. It concerned the cord "pigtails" one still sees adorning the wings of various propellor driven planes. The subject under study was "precipitation static" - an electrical charge picked up when a plane passes through certain kinds of rain or snow storms. These charges, pilots found, interfered with radio communication. Since electricity tends to concentrate itself on pointed surfaces, such as radio antennas, the investigators suggested the pigtails as a harmless discharge point for any excess charge...
Here are some of the things that Soutter pointed out to me: You jump with an emergency parachute on your chest which you deploy in case of a malfunction in the main canopy. On your first five jumps, in accordance with Parachuts Club of America regulations, you use a static line, which means that your rip cord is pulled for you as soon as you leave the plane...
...sport parachute jumps made at Mansfield--and at least that many at Orange--resulting in no fatalities whatsoever. Last year there were 60,000 jumps made in this country, resulting in six fatalities--none of which attributable to parachute malfunction (a suicide two drownings, two "freezes" on non-static-line jumps, and one electrocution resulting from a landing in high wires...
Soutter, a New England safety officer licensed by the P.C.A., told me that he had taken 489 students through static-line jumps--in none of which did the main canopy fail. And he showed me how a parachute works, how the several tough, elastic bands throw the pack open when the rip cord is pulled, and how, at the same instant, the pilot chute (a miniature parachute that pulls the main canopy out) hurtles almost 20 feet into the air by the force of its own compressed spring system...
...general rise of FM broadcasting across the U.S. Developed in the '30s when AM broadcasting was at its peak, slowed by World War II, FM was almost obliterated in the postwar rush to television. The quality of FM reception is clearly superior to AM, and is almost entirely static-free. As most of AM disintegrated into rock-'n'-rollery and TV began hunting for all the lowest cultural denominators, FM became an outpost of excellence whose scope has steadily grown. In 1956 there were 656 FM stations in the U.S. Now there are 1,188 stations...