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The device that TWA was demonstrating at the moment WAE's plane was crashing is similar to Pan American's. Called "the radio direction-finder and anti-rain-static loop antennae," it was developed by TWA's communications department under Engineer John Curtis Franklin. Radio direction-finders are not new, come in a half-dozen makes (TIME, March 25, 1935). In general they are doughnut-shaped loops sticking through the fuselage. By turning the loop and listening, the pilot can learn the direction of any radio station, for when the loop faces directly toward the station the signals disappear. A pilot can get bearings on, two separate radio stations, thus triangulate his position. But the ordinary direction-finder, like all exposed antennae, is subject to ice conditions or rain-static. The latter results from minute particles of electricity stored in rain drops which hit the antennae. This may have been what jumbled Pilot Lewis' radio last week. TWA's device is the first to eliminate rain-static, does it with an aluminum covering. Unlike Pan American's system, TWA's requires the pilot to triangulate his own position. The new loop also receives the regular beam, thus gives the pilot a choice of two navigational methods. Offering it free to any airline, TWA cautioned that its new loop is not infallible under all conditions. Any radio, for example, may go dead in the midst of a severe thunder & lightning storm.
*Last week, however, a Lockheed Electra of Compañia Mexicana de Aviación, subsidiary of Pan American Airways, crashed and burned with nine aboard in a jungle swamp near Vera Cruz.