Page 49 - Winterling's Chasing the Wind

While waiting a few weeks for the next weather class, I was assigned to various duties
on the base. In addition to loading trucks and performing KP duty, I also received a
certificate for learning how to stoke the coal furnace in our barracks. Finally, I joined
the Weather Observers class, conducted by Sergeant Phillips. He taught the four groups
of clouds – low, middle, high, and vertical development, and the various kinds of
weather instruments. I learned about the gas in weather balloons. I wrote a letter to my
high school science teacher, Dorothy Thomas, about the process of making hydrogen
by depositing zinc pellets into a cylinder containing hydrochloric acid, similar to an
experiment we had done in her Chemistry class at Lee High School.

It was interesting learning how the maximum and the minimum thermometer worked,
and the requirements for locating the equipment in an instrument shelter to keep them
from giving false readings in the bright sun or the nocturnal heat loss by radiation under
clear skies. We learned the proper location for the rain gauge, and how to read the water
level in the collection tube. Upon completion of the course, I was given a certificate
stating that I had finished at the top of my class.

While at Chanute, we occasionally assembled on the tarmac between the hangars and
the runways. With a few of my favorite planes, the F86 Sabrejet parked nearby, we’d
march by a reviewing stand where base officers stood. Finally, I was most inspired by
the evening that our classes assembled outside the front entrance of the base. As the sun
was sinking, and the sky turned from dark blue to reddish orange, we heard the sound
of a bugler playing “Taps” on the loudspeakers. In the silence that followed the last
notes of “taps,” we marched into darkness back to our barracks on Chanute Air Force
Base.

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