ean and other &§ . missions. TtAL — The details of the island resupply flights were discussed in the section devoted to airlift. See Figure 19 for a summary of SA-16 flying activities. When the SA-16 aircraft first arrived in the Eniwetok Proving Ground, the mooring buoys at several of the weather island sites were unusable or in such a state of disrepair as to make their use hazardous. action was taken to replace or repair these buoys. Immediate In future operations care should be taken to see that these buoys are in operable condition prior to the beginning of operations. Another problem arose in the availability of the Ponape homing beacon. This beacon was originally only turned on on-request and operated only for " a short time while the aircraft was in transit to Kapingamarangi and not ™ turned on again until one (1) hour prior to the estimated time of return = of the aircraft from Kapingamarangi. On ons occasion, a flight was forced to return early to Ponape due to loss of all other navigational equipnent and bad weather in the Kapingamarangi area. communication with Ponape radic was lost. High frequency The flight back to Ponape on this occasion was uneventful but had bad weather prevailed at Ponape it is doubtful that the SA-16 could have made a landing in a sheltered area and would have been forced to make a dangercus open sea ianding due to fuel exhaustion. This situation was corrected through coordination with the District Administrator of Ponape. This same type cf cocrdinaticr should be effected at the earliest tine ‘or prior to the beginning of another test program in the EPG. A limiting factor in SA-16 flights to resupply weather islands was the gross weight factor for water landings and take-offs. core: a It was necessary 116 We