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Author Topic: Betty's Notes - 158 mi.  (Read 40634 times)

Betty's Notes - 158 mi.
« on: January 07, 2011, 02:12:38 PM »

In Betty's Notes we find these entries:

Entry Page Might be? Meaning?
"158 mi." Page 49 158°? True heading AE/FN chart Howland to Niku?
"58 338" Page 51 158° 338°? see above

True heading between Howland (center) - outer edges Niku: 158,9°T-159,3°T
True headings between 5 NM outbound Howland (center) 249°T - outer edges Niku: 158,1°T-158,4°T (suggesting Howland coordinates AE/FN map South of the line 159-339)

Question, your thoughts on 158 miles possibly being 158°, i.e. True heading Howland (AE/FN map) to NC/NY/Niku...  Or any other known possibility for 158 mi.?

LTM, Jose
« Last Edit: January 07, 2011, 02:27:16 PM by Jose Pedro Isern Comas »
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Gus Rubio

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Re: Betty's Notes - 158 mi.
« Reply #1 on: January 07, 2011, 03:16:24 PM »

I too thought the notation "58 338" resembled the line of position "157 337" that AE had indicated to the Itasca in one of her last radio transmissions.  Wouldn't that imply that AE/FN knew they had landed on Gardner/Niku?

Also, welcome from another new forum poster.


-Gus
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Mike Piner

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Re: Betty's Notes - 158 mi.
« Reply #2 on: January 07, 2011, 10:22:01 PM »

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.
MikeP
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Martin X. Moleski, SJ

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Re: Betty's Notes - 158 mi.
« Reply #3 on: January 07, 2011, 11:41:55 PM »

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.

On that page, search for "LOP/Betty's notebook".
LTM,

           Marty
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Martin X. Moleski, SJ

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Re: 281 North: To/two wait on/at Norwich
« Reply #4 on: January 09, 2011, 10:39:57 AM »

... reading the archives for now ...

If it's not too late, keep track of the good posts you find in the archives for future reference.

I read the archives that were available in 2000 when I joined TIGHAR, and I have read the Forum religiously since then.  The Forum is a real gold mine of information, but it has all of the drawbacks of a real gold mine.  You sometimes have to shift and sift tons of ore to find the flakes and nuggets of gold embedded in the ore.
LTM,

           Marty
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Martin X. Moleski, SJ

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Re: 281 North: To/two wait on/at Norwich
« Reply #5 on: January 09, 2011, 06:20:26 PM »

I will work on something, have sent you an email.  Might take some time though  :)

No problem.  I think I heard Cesar Chavez say, "The poor have more time than money."  The site is a work in progress and probably always will be.    ;)
LTM,

           Marty
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Christophe Blondel

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Re: Betty's Notes - 158 mi.
« Reply #6 on: January 16, 2011, 02:42:20 PM »

Jose,

how do you want 281 N : ..--- ---.. .---- / -. to be heard instead of TO WAIT ON : - --- / .-- .- .. - / --- -. ?

281 N has two initial dots and a single dot sequence in the middle, wheras TO WAIT ON begins with two dash-only letters, and possesses three intermediate dot sequences. Either sent by AE/FN or rekeyed by a good Samaritan, you cannot escape the fact that this message was received via Morse code, so we must forget about phonetical similitudes of the English-transcripted message.
An interesting suggestion may be nevertheles that NORTH could be the result of hearing only a part of NORWICH (T is a single - that can easily be picked from either the W or the C). That would have actually made the hearing more like NOR T H, but the unwanted spacings may have been attributed to the hesitation of the sender.
A question is that, as far as I understand, we do not even know preciseley if the Wailupe operators actually heard 281 NORTH or just 281 N. Does anybody know ? If they just received N, we can forget the idea.

Christophe Blondel
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Walter Runck

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Re: 281 North: To/two wait on/at Norwich
« Reply #7 on: February 11, 2011, 05:13:15 PM »

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.

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.



The question of whether they knew they were on Gardner or not has been eating at me for a while.  If they gave up on Howland and headed for the Phoenix Islands, you have to wonder if they knew anything about them, had a chart or other reference that would help, or were just winging it, so to speak.
If Gardner was just the first land they saw where they thought they could bring it down safely, did they know what it was?  If it’s me and I’m betting the farm on this landing, I’d be squawking everything I knew about it (especially where I’m going to try it) before I went in, but if she did no one heard her. 
Anyway, the current version of Sailing Directions, a nautical pub that FN would have been familiar with from his time at sea, describes the islands in a way that would have given them a pretty good chance of making the ID before they landed, including the wreck.  Has anyone checked a 1937 version of this to see if the wreck was mentioned?  I haven’t found back issues yet, but if anyone has figured out what charts he was using or would have had available, I’d be curious to see what how Gardner was described and whether the wreck was indicated.  It just strikes me as odd that the post loss transmissions don’t seem to include the name of the island.  Kind of hard to imagine that they could find it without knowing what it was.
The current version lists the wreck as “reportedly breaking up”, so it’s not an up to the minute pub, even today, but Norwich City had been up on the reef for 7 years at this point, and a fairly well publicized rescue had gathered some recent data about the island.
Once they’re down safely, there’s no “Welcome to Gardner” sign, no customs guys, no nothing.  Except a wreck with a name.    Even with just a basic chart, a couple of sights would have given them an accurate location pretty easily and it’s hard to believe that a guy who just did 2500 DR miles at 100 plus knots couldn’t figure out which island on the chart he was on.  I believe Amelia had even studied basic celestial (mention of Bowditch in one of the books).  Does anyone know if she was capable of reducing a sight?
Since the sextant box apparently made it to shore, how about the sextant itself?  Or the octant?  What was more useful, the box or the contents?




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Martin X. Moleski, SJ

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Re: 281 North: To/two wait on/at Norwich
« Reply #8 on: February 11, 2011, 11:00:22 PM »

...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.
LTM,

           Marty
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Walter Runck

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Re: 281 North: To/two wait on/at Norwich
« Reply #9 on: February 12, 2011, 07:36:51 AM »

...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.

I agree with your statement as far as it concerns the final camp, but I was thinking more about the time between the landing and then.  If I think the Electra is in jeopardy and the island is deserted, I'm gonna strip her to the bones.  Anything that would help me goes ashore.  Sextant (there was a Norwich City or rescue ship lifeboat near the wreck, I believe), food, clothing, fuel, signalling gear, tanks, optics, navigation library (FN planning to start nav school, I'm skeptical about him ditching charts, logs, pubs etc.), fire extinguisher, whatever isn't nailed down.



The sextant is only helpful while you can still transmit and try to tell people where you are.


Unless and until your position changes.  If I'm stuck on an island with a boat, maybe I'm not so stuck after all.



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.

Agreed.  GP would not have been pleased to have that kind of a marketing hook not survive for posterity.  If he thought she could sell books before...

Actually, I may have just invented my own whole new conspiracy theory.  The disappearance was a marketing stunt gone awry!    ;)
« Last Edit: February 12, 2011, 08:16:08 AM by Walter Runck »
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h.a.c. van asten

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Re: Betty's Notes - 158 mi.
« Reply #10 on: May 05, 2011, 04:00:04 AM »

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

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david alan atchason

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Re: Betty's Notes - 158 mi.
« Reply #11 on: May 05, 2011, 11:04:03 AM »

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. Her account does jibe somewhat with what Edgar Cayce and another psychic said, as to A & F surviving, but Fred being in bad shape, Amelia also shaken up. Maybe she heard these reports and was influenced by them.
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Roger Ward

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Re: Betty's Notes - 158 mi.
« Reply #12 on: May 05, 2011, 12:57:02 PM »

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.

Do you mean like this:

Quote
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.

http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Documents/Notebook/notebook.html
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Tim Collins

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Re: Betty's Notes - 158 mi.
« Reply #13 on: May 05, 2011, 01:45:03 PM »

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



While I'm sure there certainly are examples of this type of thing out there, I would be surprised if anyone here would even remotely ascribe such a thing to Betty. Her marginalia is stylistically perfectly in keeping with the context of the time (though admittedly I can only attest to the relevance of the song lyrics).  As for legibility and neatness, remember that that was emphasized back then (unlike today) and more readily seen. Besides, Bett is a girl and they tend to be more fastidious about such things. Also remember that Betty's notes only represent a percentage of what may have been broadcast. It's not as though she was transcribing a monologue.  Just some thoughts.
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david alan atchason

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Re: Betty's Notes - 158 mi.
« Reply #14 on: May 05, 2011, 04:16:59 PM »

I was wrong her calling her father for sure. I kind of had a feeling I might have been. I did not reread the account. But did her father corroborate what Betty heard? Did the neighbor come listen to Betty's set? Was the account as detailed as that? Before I plunge on here, I will check what the story was.
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