May 26, 1981

''It was too much blue sky,'' said Fred Tippen, president of Wonder Tan, an Atlanta-based company, when asked what happened to all those tanning parlors. ''Everybody thought it was easy money.'' Or talk to Rick Stevenson, president of Supertan, based in Arkansas: ''This is personal,'' he said, ''but I think franchising is the biggest rip-off in the world.'' In 1978, when the idea of tanning booth franchises was first marketed with vigor, the enterprise looked like an entrepreneur's dream. In two minutes, for a few dollars a visit, the public would get brown. And seemingly, for a franchise fee of $7,000 to $30,000, a few strips of plywood, some goggles, some ultraviolet tanning bulbs and a supply of reflective paper, the entrepreneurs needed only to wait for the profits to roll in.

IT used to be that you became a dancer by toiling away with unlimited hope and very limited money in the small private studios that dot New York. If you were lucky, you were accepted for advanced training at a school attached to a major company and gained a kind of inside track on employment. Today, however, aspiring dancers are increasingly turning to universities to learn their trade. And colleges are moving quickly to meet these needs.

This is a story of high-stakes corporate gambling by tight-lipped men in well-tailored suits. The stakes run into hundreds of millions of dollars. Promising ''playing cards'' are given the names of women, cocktails or automobile parts to mask their identities. Bagmen with access to very big money roam the city. ''We have all kinds of weapons in our arsenal for all kinds of purposes,'' one player averred, with the slightest of smiles.For all its romance, however, the game being played here is unlikely to arouse the suspicion of the authorities. Indeed, it has been openly endorsed by the Secretary of Interior, who has even suggested that it should be expanded tenfold over the next five years. Wagering Began 17 Years Ago The game is the auctioning of Federal real estate off the coast of the United States to oil and gas companies. Since the wagering began 17 years ago, companies have bet more than $30 billion to win a chance at spending billions more in search of underground riches.

International An Israeli drone was shot down in the vicinity of the Lebanese border by missiles fired from Syrian territory. It was at least the third Israeli pilotless craft that has been shot down since Syria moved missiles into Lebanon nearly four weeks ago. Page A1, Column 6. Moscow denied Israel's contention that Soviet advisers were accompanying Syrian army units into Lebanon. Responding to a statement by Prime Minister Menachem Begin, the press agency Tass said that "there have been no Soviet advisers whatsoever in Lebanon, nor are there any now." A3:4-6.

Missiles fired from inside Syria brought down another pilotless Israeli reconnaissance aircraft in the vicinity of the Lebanese-Syrian border today. It was at least the third such aircraft shot down since Syria moved missiles into Lebanon nearly four weeks ago. A Syrian spokesman said that the drone had flown into Syrian airspace and had crashed near the town of Zebdani, northwest of Damascus. He said it was the sixth plane shot down.