Clouds drift away as seeding operation trips on speeches, technical snag

BENGALURU: Time, tide and, evidently, clouds wait for none. The cloud-seeding aircraft , on its inaugural flight on Monday, was left chasing rainclouds after long speeches from ministers overtook the event itself.The cloud-seeding aircraft was to take off at 2.45pm from Jakkur airfield for HAL airport to refuel and then onto the Cauvery basin. Three cabinet ministers - Krishna Byregowda (agriculture), HK Patil (rural development) and M R Seetharam (planning and statistics) - were at Jakkur to flag off the Rs 38-crore project, called Varshadhari. However, one speech followed the other and the ministers overshot the deadline. Finally, the trio boarded the flight for the brief Jakkur-HAL trip at 3.15pm. But that was not the end of it.The B200 Beechcraft plane had just taxied on the runway when the ATC clearance failed. The radio telephony - meant to connect the air traffic controller with the plane - had developed a snag. "We were unable to connect with the plane for communications which delayed the flight takeoff," said the Yelahanka air traffic control. Finally, at 4.15pm, the ATC clearance was given and the plane took off at 4.35pm. By then, the heavens had given up. The cloud formation that was to be seeded over Magadi had moved towards Ramanagara. The plane was, then, redirected. The B200, under Captain Byron Pederson from the US, will be flying for two hours each day in attempts to induce rain over the drought-hit Cauvery basin.