Laserfiche WebLink
<br /> <br />.., . Of) ? <br />Wr !. <br />-'P''i 1 <br /> <br /> <br />S~:A ..~. <br /> <br />A,:;.-.---.,\L.. 1____ <br />F.. .: -f----.. <br />I <br />( <br />E; <br /> <br />.,;.,..... <br /> <br />WEEKLY NEWSLETTER <br />94-12 <br /> <br />PERIOD JULY 17 - JULY 23, 1994 <br /> <br />General Interest: On Monday, July 19th, Paul Harvey News presented <br />a segment about "Sound Guns" being sold by a Texas company saying, <br />in effect, if the company's claims are true it could be a great <br />boon to Midwest farmers suffering crop hail damage. Supposedly, a <br />farmer could fire one of these "guns" at an approaching hailstorm <br />so that hail will be eliminated and his crop saved. I believe the <br />price of the sound gun was said to be $70,000. unfortunately, Mr. <br />Harvey said the company would giVe baok one's money if. it didn't <br />work. Thereby, Mr. Farvey unwittingly lent a degree of ~rAdihility <br />to the fact that such a system actually may do what it claims. Most <br />likely, this promotion is well on the way to becoming a scam of <br />epic proportions, fleecing distressed farmers out of money better <br />used for something else. <br /> <br />I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll give any takers the S~e <br />deal, only a lot better and cheaper. Send me $10,000 and I'll give <br />you a "magic box" which will keep hail from destroying your crops; <br />if it doesn't work, I will also give you your money back. How can <br />I make this offer? Here's how: <br /> <br />~; ~ <br /> <br />From crop hail insurance records for Kansas dating back to <br />1948, the average yearly crop hail loss for al~ crops through 1993 <br />averages 3.73%. The high lOBS year in any of these years was 1951 <br />with 7.76% of the State's crops lost; in 1988 only 0.47% of the <br />total crops were lost to hail. This means, on avarage, the sound <br />gunners and I would have about 96% of our "clients" not asking for <br />money back, even if we did nothing, assuming evenly distributed <br />sales statewide. However, the percentage of people wanting their <br />money back migh~ be higher for us in some of the more hail-prone <br />areas of the State such as Western Kansas. This is typical of the <br />other Mid-western states as well as Kansas. Although statistical <br />crop lOsses appear small, with the billions of dollars of crop out <br />there, even a small percentage loss of the total crop amounts to <br />hundreds of millions of dollars each year in the USA. <br /> <br />BACKGROUND: From what knowledge I have of Italian-made sound <br />cannons recently used in Greece and Turkey, they haven't worked <br />well in those areas. For instance, back in 1983-84 the Greek <br />government was testing sound cannons while simultaneously looking <br />at the possibility of performing hail suppression using aircraft. <br />Apparently, Greeks don't believe in sound cannons since they have <br />been using aircraft ever since 1984 on their hail suppression <br />programs. Moat likely, the sound gun concept, talked about by Mr. <br />Harvey, is based on the premise that intense sound waves generated <br />by the gun will "oavitate" hailstones. In essence, since hail- <br />stones, especiallY larger ones, oontain numerous oavities of small <br />ai, SUfficientlY strong sound waves passing through hailstones will <br />resonate within the air cavities causing the sound wave energy to <br />build up enough pressure causing h&ilstones to break into smaller <br /> <br />., <br />