| Entry | Page | Might be? | Meaning? |
| "158 mi." | Page 49 (http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Documents/Notebook/page49.html) | 158°? | True heading AE/FN chart Howland to Niku? |
| "58 338" | Page 51 (http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Documents/Notebook/page51.html) | 158° 338°? | see above |
In the forum archives, find 15Apr2007 16:07:03, Ric is addressing the "58-338" notiotation in Betty's notebook, Others before and after. Also me, sometime in 2007 as a newbe.
It is very informative to go back and read those old discussions in the Forum archives.
... reading the archives for now ...
I will work on something, have sent you an email. Might take some time though :)
In the forum archives, find 15Apr2007 16:07:03, Ric is addressing the "58-338" notiotation in Betty's notebook, Others before and after. Also me, sometime in 2007 as a newbe.
It is very informative to go back and read those old discussions in the Forum archives.
Here is the link to the April 2007 archive. (http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/forum/Forum_Archives/200704.txt)
On that page, search for "LOP/Betty's notebook".
Thanks Mike, Marty.
Many referrals to LOP but AE/FN knew precisely where they were I believe, except for the name of the island.
...What was more useful, the box or the contents?
...What was more useful, the box or the contents?
I'm going to guess that by the time the castaway made his or her final camp, the box was more useful than the sextant.
The sextant is only helpful while you can still transmit and try to tell people where you are.
After that, the box may come in handy for keeping your survival diary safe. It would be the foundation for a best-seller if and when you get rescued.
It is a little curious to me Betty didn't ask anybody (like her parents) to help her listen, I think the transmission went on quite a while.
The transmissions continued to come in, off and on, for about three hours until 6:15 p.m. At 5:15 her father came home from work and Betty excitedly told him to come listen. After a few minutes her father ran next door to see if his neighbor could also hear it on his radio, but perhaps because his neighbor did not have a long antenna, nothing was heard on the neighbor’s set. Later that evening Betty’s father reported the event to the local Coast Guard station but he was told that the government had ships in the area and everything was under control.
JPIs com. I have the strong impression that "Betty" (if she ever existed) was dreaming when she wrote down the " messages" , and that she, after having informed people , could , later , no more draw back her statements. Her writing of every entry is perfectly on and between the lines of the exercise book : that is not the way you put down randomly heard radio calls , it is the way you spell out your day dreams on paper. In later years she may have started to more and more believe her own phantasy until the pseudo truth took possession of her. The psycholical name for this phenomenon is pseudologica phantastica
I just checked on Betty's Notes, and she has written that the transmissions went on after 5:15 when she presumably called her father. But there is no assertion that her father listened and He thought he heard or likewise the neighbor listened or anything like that. I know I'm nitpicking and in the big scheme of things this means little. Did the neighbor ever comment on this incident? Or did he just go back to eating his dinner? I don't see anything in her account that reveals any detail that she couldn't have heard on the news or just made up. I have a family member who is given to the behavior named as pseudologica phantastica (I didn't know it had a name) and I concluded long ago it is pointless to argue with someone like that about these fabrications, it just causes hard feelings.
Maybe there is a more detailed version of this story that would be more convincing. I'm just being a skeptic. I welcome any corrections to my view that anyone wishes to make.
Do your homework before you make a fool out of yourself.
Lookup "Betty's notebook" in the history of this site.
Ted Campbell
The transmissions continued to come in, off and on, for about three hours until 6:15 p.m. At 5:15 her father came home from work and Betty excitedly told him to come listen. After a few minutes her father ran next door to see if his neighbor could also hear it on his radio, but perhaps because his neighbor did not have a long antenna, nothing was heard on the neighbor’s set. Later that evening Betty’s father reported the event to the local Coast Guard station but he was told that the government had ships in the area and everything was under control. Betty kept her notebook and, over the years, occasionally tried to get someone to pay attention to her claims of having heard
Chris' post - "Link http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Documents/Notebook/notebook.html"
Thanks Chris - just stumbled into this string and was aching for this to turn up.
Indeed - homework will be most helpful to those pursuing this - TIGHAR did an excellent job in its review of Betty's story and her notes. The reader can of course judge for himself, but the questions raised in this string have been well considered.
Betty's story is fascinating - and one thing that struck me is that she never seemed focused on self-aggrandizement or gain, just had a story that haunted her and that she wanted to share - and the credible evidence of her notebook from so long ago. It is also true that kids in her time were strongly encouraged (and graded upon) neatness in handwriting, etc. - things that are not stressed strongly enough today. People born after the '50s at least seem to know little of such skills and their importance to an older generation unless they paid close attention to elder's stories and writings.
Whatever Betty heard, I am for one convinced that it was 'real' at least in terms of how it came across the airwaves. I am also personally confident that what was described is consistent with a real transmission from AE and FN, but that is admittedly a personal conclusion that cannot be proven. I remain haunted by the use of numbers and letters and the reference to what may have been the shipwreck - but read for yourselves via the link above.
LTM -