Date:         Sat, 1 Dec 2007 10:03:47
From:         Mike Piner
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

There is nothing like having been there,  Dr King can be
counted on to give his expertise.  I continue to marvel at the way
members complement each other on the ideas that are constantly being
presented.  I have been reading the posts from way back till present,
and lots of Great thoughts have had their birth on to Forum.
     The pics and documents on the Purdue Earhart collection is
fastinating to look thru.  #637 is a copy of the bearings planned for
the flight from Howland to Lae in the east to west direction that was
aborted by the crash at luke Field.  On this map of Howland is the
coordinates  00-49 N / 176 - 43 W .  This is 62 miles east of the
actual location of Howland Island.  This means that they arrived
Howland early  by about 32 minutes.  They may even have flown past
Howland Island, tho not flying close to it because they were south of
Baker Island.
    Item number 2004 mentions an autopilot.  First I'd heard of that.
#924 Cadet Wayne Jordan flew from the Colorado on the search of
Gardner for Amelia.  #1094 is Noonan navigation hand written notes.
In 1203 Noonan writes about a "Sun Course, very interesting.
LTM who at times was obsessed too.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 1 Dec 2007 18:45:23
From:         Randy Jacobson
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

The discrepency in Howland's position back in 1937 was on the order of 6
miles, not 62 miles.

The true position is 48', 6" N, 176* 38' 12"W
The reported position is 49' 0"N, 176* 43' 09"W, as stated in the American
Practical Navigator, 1936 edition.

Both positions were known to Bill Miller, who coordinated AE's first flight
attempt, as he was the Equatorial Island Administrator for the Dept. of the
Interior in 1936, and was present when the new position was taken and
reported to the USCG and USN.  The position was not publicly updated until
new maps were published in 1939.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 1 Dec 2007 18:46:45
From:         Ron Bright
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

    Where do you get 62 miles east of Howland's "actual location" ? I
have at least 5 coordinates for Howland from various sources. The
biggest difference I have seen is about 5 miles off.
    I know that a minute ( 1/60) of a degree is one nautical mile.

LTM,
Ron Bright
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 2 Dec 2007 10:42:11
From:         Mike Piner
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

For Ron Bright, Randy Jacobson

I stated that item 637 of the Purdue Amellia Collection is of a
document, a map having those coordinates on it.  Ploting that on
Google Earth is 62 mi,  I also thought is strange as I had read "5
miles error in position a Howland" elswhere.  This document has the
position, which may have been an error that was not used, because the
same document had the total distance from howland to Lae as 2556 Miles.
    I was reporting what, I'm shure has been throrally perused by
others, but there are many "new guys" members who need the places to
look at.
LTM. Bless her heart, she was always right
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 2 Dec 2007 10:42:49
From:         Mike Piner
Subject:      Howland
A point of fact:  I plotted wrong. Mike
LTM
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 2 Dec 2007 11:38:01
From:         Tom King
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

Mike Piner says:

>There is nothing like having been there,  Dr King can be
>counted on to give his expertise.  I continue to marvel at the way
>members complement each other on the ideas that are constantly being
>presented.

But there's also great value in NOT having been there; you can ask
the questions and make the suggestions that don't occur to us who've
been there, or been with the project forever and ever, and hence
don't think to ask or suggest.  And often a "dumb" question or idea
can cause us to look at something in a different way, and come up
with new stuff.  So please do keep presenting ideas; they're invaluable.

LTM (who reminds her children that the only really stupid question is
the one not asked)
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 2 Dec 2007 13:14:55
From:         Alan Caldwell
Subject:      Re: Howland

So did they, mike.

Alan

> From Mike Piner;
>    A point of fact:  I plotted wrong. Mike
> LTM
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 2 Dec 2007 21:11:47
From:         Stephen Packard
Subject:      Re: Seven site crash landing scenario

The one photo from the 1937 search actually shows the 7 site
relatively well.  It does not show show the area near the norwich
city, but it it shows most of the coastline where the seven site
is.   It would be easy to understand how a person or debris could be
hidden by vegetation but an aircraft?   I doubt it.  Maybe it could
be hidden well enough that a person glancing might not see it, but
there is not even the slightest evidence of of an aircraft or large
object or disturbed area in that photo.

Could it just not be seen?   Maybe, but I would doubt it.

The other thing, you're coming in from the north and landing on the
island, what is the first thing you're going to see?   The Norwhich
city.   It's also the only apparent sign of human habitation on the
island.   It seems logical to want to land near a big hulking ship
like that because it implies human activity on the island.   The
other thing is that having a plane wreck in the area of the Norwhich
city would explain why it was not noticed as readily by the Loran
crew or the survey parties.   It would already be lying around all
kinds of scrap metal and debris.

A personal story that is semi relevant:  I was in ireland and I went
into a pub.  There was a big hunk of something or other infront of
it.   I looked and thought "That looks like a radial engine"  I
looked closer.  Yeah, as soon as I got a look at it, definately an
aircraft engine.  A big one too.   I saw the valves and the coroded
remains of the sparkplugs and everything.  Not in good shape at all,
but definately an aircraft engine.   So I asked and got "Oh that's...
I don't know... been there forever... I think it's from a boat"
"Airplane?  No that's from an old mill or something"   "Um..
that's... that might have come off a ship I think.  I don't know...
you think it's from a plane?"

Of course, it was indeed an aircraft engine and one guy who actually
knew told me it was from a German bomber which crash-landed on the
beach during the second world war.   This apparently was not unusual
as wounded bombers which could not make it back to Germany or France
would consider it preferable to land in a neutral country than in
British territory.

But that goes to show that if you're either not firmiliar with
aircraft or not looking you could easily not realize.   I certainly
would not have noticed had I not stopped there.   Had I just glanced
out of the cornor of my eye I'd think it just a rusty hulk of
something-or-other.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 2 Dec 2007 21:54:15
From:         Karen Hoy
Subject:      Re: Seven site crash landing scenario

The photo wasn't taken until July 9, when the Colorado's floatplanes
spent maybe 10 minutes over Gardner during high tide ("Finding
Amelia" 204-208.)

Was the Electra even still visible by July 9? Betty's Notebook was
probably recorded on July 5 ("Finding Amelia" 174) and seems to
suggest that rising waters were threatening the Electra. How far down
is the sea floor just off shore?

In the Niku V kite picture of the Seven Site, taken directly
overhead, I can make out a few colorful tiny flecks. I can't see any
identifiable people, although they were there. No wonder the Colorado
pilots didn't see very much.

LTM (who doesn't see it either)
Karen Hoy
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 2 Dec 2007 21:55:00
From:         Jon Watson
Subject:      Re: Seven site crash landing scenario

Tom King wrote:

> As for why they'd leave the food cache -- two reasons come to mind.
> A: they wiped out the cache, and B: they wanted to see if there was
> anything to eat/drink elsewhere on the island.

Would their on-board information regarding Gardner (Niku) have told
them if there were any inhabitants on the island at that time?

If not, a third reason might have been to see if there was anyone
else on the island.

Ltm,
Jon
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 3 Dec 2007 08:07:16
From:         Terry Thorgaard
Subject:      Re: Seven site crash landing scenario

I thought I established on this forum, 6 months ago or so, that from
the estimated tidal data we have, and the time we know the float
planes flew over, they flew over closer to low tide than high tide.

But yes,  if the Electra had crashed near the Seven Site, it could
well have been at the bottom of the ocean by the time the float
planes from the Colorado came by.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 3 Dec 2007 08:07:56
From:         Tom King
Subject:      Re: Seven site crash landing scenario

Jon Watson says:

> If not, a third reason might have been to see if there was anyone
> else on the island.

Very true, and I very much doubt if they had information as to
whether Niku was occupied -- except maybe in a very vague, not
particularly up-to-date sense.

Stephen Packard's observations are on target, I think, except that as
Karen Hoy implies, we have to apply the same thinking to a windward-
side landing that we do to one on the Nutiran reef -- it's very
likely that the plane would be off the reef by the time the Colorado
pilots flew over.  Except -- here's a question for Randy Jacobson and/
or others with oceanographic expertise -- since the (very) prevailing
wind on Niku is from the northeast, and the set of the swells seems
to be the same, would there be a tendency for stuff on the windward
side reef to migrate inboard toward the shore rather than to be
sucked off the reef into deep water?  Certainly it's on the windward
shore where we find most of the big flotsam, with the sole exception
of the Norwich City.

Great Irish anecdote, Stephen, and as a non-airplane guy I agree with
you; the natural conclusion for someone like Maude and Bevington to
jump to about mechanical wreckage around the Norwich City would be
that it came from the Norwich City.  Unless it was a wing or
something of obvious aircraft origin.

LTM (who cautions about jumping to conclusions)
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 3 Dec 2007 12:40:24
From:         Skeet Gifford
Subject:      Re: Seven site

For Karen Hoy

At 22:00 12/2/2007, you wrote:

> In the Niku V kite picture of the Seven Site, taken directly
> overhead, I can make out a few colorful tiny flecks. I can't see any
> identifiable people, although they were there. No wonder the Colorado
> pilots didn't see very much.

To be seen by the aircraft crew, our castaways must be in the open,
but in Niku's brutal climate, there are compelling reasons to remain
in the shade. The vegetation canopy is an effective sound absorber.
Based on my experience from 2001, the "white noise" created by the
constant breeze masks the sound of an engine until the aircraft (in
our case a helicopter) is less than 200 yards away. An assumed speed
of 90 mph is 132 feet per second. That gives our castaways a mere 4.5
seconds to react and get to a clear area before the aircraft is
directly overhead and they can no longer be seen by the crew. Even
doubling my estimate to a quarter of a mile, gives our castaways only
9 seconds to react.

The O3U-3 would have required about 10 minutes to make *one* circuit
of the island. That is the same amount of time that Ric estimated
Lambrecht spent at Niku (Finding Amelia, p 208).

Had Lambrecht made a second circuit of the island, would he have
found our castaways on the open beach waving? We'll never know.

Skeet Gifford
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 3 Dec 2007 12:43:40
From:         Marty Moleski
Subject:      Re: Seven site crash landing scenario

> ... Except -- here's a question for Randy Jacobson and/or others
> with oceanographic expertise -- since the (very) prevailing wind on
> Niku is from the northeast, and the set of the swells seems to be
> the same, would there be a tendency for stuff on the windward side
> reef to migrate inboard toward the shore rather than to be sucked
> off the reef into deep water? ...

This was one of the things Howard addressed at an Earhart Project
Advisory Committee (EPAC) meeting.  I forget whether it was his
first or second time in attendance.

The diagram he drew suggested that the prevailing winds would
cause a circulation around both sides of the island; where
the two currents meet on the lee side, there would be a sand
river going all the way to the sea floor (if I remember
correctly).  Material would tend to be driven toward shore
first, then it would tend to float toward the sand river.
(A kind of longshore drift?)

As I understood it, Howard did not think that the action of
the waves would tend to carry material from the reef off
of the reef.  This, of course, is a general rule, not a
law; strange things do happen.  But my impression was that
he predicted that the Electra pieces would head shoreward
from the reef, then go along the "boat channel" and then
be flushed down the sand river.

I don't remember whether Howard's death was announced in the
Forum.  He succumbed to cancer earlier this year.  R.I.P.

					Marty #2359

*******************************************

  From Pat:

I don't remember either... you can see our memorial to Howard at:

http://www.tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/NikuV/gallery/Howard/
galleryhoward.html
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 3 Dec 2007 13:22:31
From:         Stephen Packard
Subject:      Re: Seven site crash scenario

In regards to the windward side and currents and such.   This is not
going to necessarily be as simple as everything moving in a certain
direction.   Niku is in an area which is subject to some very rough
and varying weather, combined with tidal flows and normal currents.
The prevailing wind and current may be from one direction, but when
it strikes the shore, it can be pushed to the side or it can form a
sort of "whirlpool" which makes the current basically do a sort of "U-
turn"  this is something like the riptide effect that swimmers can
get caught in.   It can be a very strong pull outward, even against
the prevailing current or tide, which occupies a relatively narrow
channel.   So you'd get that effect at times, combined with the
changing tides, the winds and the effect of waves coming in and out.

I would be very cautious about assuming that any debris would go in
any direction.   Over the long term, the debris from the Norwhich
city provides some clues about which way the heavier stuff tends to
travel, but it's a chaotic system and in reality it would not
surprise me if the debris had gone in any direction.   Even within
weeks, there's no telling how eddy currents and other such effects
might distribute things in ways you might not anticipate right away.

It's even possible that major parts of the aircraft could become
hidden in the depths or under sand and then "come back" years later
when a storm washes it in or a wave uncovers it.   I think the P-38
story can show how strange these effects can be.   That's not to say
I'd think there would be a big hulk of a fusalage intact years
later.  Not in the south pacific like that.   A big chunk of
aluminum, maybe.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 3 Dec 2007 13:23:50
From:         Adam Marsland
Subject:      Re: Seven site landing scenario

<<If not, a third reason might have been to see if there was anyone
else on the island.>>

Good grief, this is brilliant.  I can't remember anyone ever having
brought this up before, but of course this is absolutely correct.
That would be, indeed, a very compelling reason to leave the wreck
and possible rescue with (or without) a wounded Noonan.  We know no
one was on Gardner, but AE couldn't possibly be certain.  If your
crewmate is dying on your hands and no rescue in sight after several
days, look for help nearby...
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 3 Dec 2007 15:49:24
From:         Marty Moleski
Subject:      Re: Seven Site crash scenario

>  From Stephen Packard
>
> In regards to the windward side and currents and such.   This is
> not going to necessarily be as simple as everything moving in a
> certain direction.

The "prevailing winds" tend to blow from the northeast.

That gives you a windward and leeward side of the island.

The current caused by the general direction of the waves
separates around the island.

On the other side of the island, you get "longshore drift"
as the currents move toward each other.  I believe it
is these currents that created the channel parallel to the
shore on the leeward side of the island.

Where they meet, you get the sand river that carries off
debris carried by the current around the island.

> Niku is in an area which is subject to some very rough and
> varying weather, combined with tidal flows and normal currents.

I'm just describing the "normal situation."  Abnormal
situations are, of course, different.  And I don't think
Howard actually observed a "sand river" on the leeward
side of Niku--I think he was just talking about what he
would expect, based on general hydrodynamics.

> I would be very cautious about assuming that any debris would go in
> any direction.

Waves tend to carry floating debris up onto the shoreline.

Light material (some aluminum) seems to have been cast up
on the shoreline, too.

> ... It's even possible that major parts of the aircraft could
> become hidden in the depths or under sand and then "come back"
> years later when a storm washes it in or a wave uncovers it.

Howard was very excited about being on Niku and seeing how much
recent storms had stripped sand from the leeward beaches.
He showed us slides from his time there and pointed out the
features that had been uncovered by the loss of sand--I think
they were traces of an earlier shoreline.

				Marty #2874
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 3 Dec 2007 17:30:21
From:         Randy Jacobson
Subject:      Re: Seven Site crash landing scenario

Marty is correct, and what I postulated when I first joined TIGHAR was that
the shoreward wave action would carry parts shoreward, not seaward.

I do not remember a "sand river" per se in our discussions, only that under
more severe conditions, the lagoon would flush surface water seaward (to the
NW) due to water build-up in the lagoon and carry some parts that float
along with it.  When a huge storm hits, all bets are off, and the high surf
will (and has) taken sand away from the beach over the reef edge.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Tue, 4 Dec 2007 07:28:39
From:         Tom King
Subject:      Re: Seven Site crash landing scenario

My question that triggered this exchange was not about what happens
on the lee side; I know the current runs around the north cape and
down the lee as Howard described, and there are certainly all kinds
of eddies and back-currents.  However, on the Nutiran reef it appears
pretty obvious that if something is out near the edge of the reef and
starts to float, it's going to go back and forth as the surf runs
over the reef and then retreats, and if one of its backs or forths
takes it over the edge, it's going to go down.  On the windward side,
with both the wind and the swells running consistently toward the SW,
I should think there'd be more tendency for something to go in that
direction -- i.e. onto the shore -- than would be the case on the lee
side.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Tue, 4 Dec 2007 07:29:01
From:         Mike Piner
Subject:      Landing on Gardner

I've been looking at the electra parked, with people around the
propeller, when it is vertical, and people near the bottom of the
engine.  It appears that the tip of the prop is about 30 inches from
the ground, and that the bottom of the engine(sheetmetal) is aboun 48
inches.  I was trying to get an idea of what tide could the engine
have on it before it could not be restarted.  Also if the prop is
spinning would more than 30 inches cause problems?
     There is a possibility AE could have positioned the plane higher
on the beach, but the high tide with its heavy surf dragged it back
down the slope.
      One whole week before the planes from the Colorado flew over,
lots of things could have happened,  but something must have been
there for the natives to report a plane there.
      What could the sand in the lagoon entrance be hiding,  Would
moving the sand around with a pump, be concidered disturbing the eco
system in light of the violence that nature already does to the eco
system?
   My thoughts go back to the "wheel of Fortune", obviously the storm
situation moved it.  Suppose we could uncover it.
LTM

======================================================================== 
Date:         Tue, 4 Dec 2007 07:46:32
From:         Tom King
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

<<What could the sand in the lagoon entrance be hiding,  Would
moving the sand around with a pump, be concidered disturbing the eco
system in light of the violence that nature already does to the eco
system?>>

The administration of the Phoenix Islands Protected Area would
certainly ask a lot of questions about large-scale sand-pumping, and
well they should.  Whatever happens in the area naturally, we need to
keep human up-screwing of the environment to a minimum.  That said,
the sand in the lagoon entrance is certainly of great interest, and
we've made several efforts to scan it with metal detectors to see if
anything registered.  A few things have been found, but nothing
Electra-associated.  Comparison of aerial imagery over the years
shows that the sandbar has definitely grown and changed shape since
'38.  This year, Andrew McKenna checked out his idea that stuff might
have been deposited under what's now beach along the southern Nutiran
shore (inner mouth of Tatiman Passage), without success.  Of course,
stuff could be buried below the depth at which our detectors can
sense it, but to find it would require really massive dredging, which
wouldn't be allowed even if we could afford to do it.  Not something
I'd want to pursue without some clear evidence that something's
there.  There might be better technology we could employ to sense
what's under the sand, however, and that might be very much worth doing.

LTM (who coyly spins the Wheel of Fortune)
======================================================================== 
Date:         Tue, 4 Dec 2007 14:48:56
From:         Stephen Packard
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

Actually I have been wondering some things about the position of the
Electra.   I've pushed around plenty of aircraft and once you get it
rolling it's generally not hard at all to propel a plane with human
effort.  We don't know the condition of the two when they landed, but
there's the Betty journal which implies that Newman was injured but
AE was probably basically okay.   Of course, I wold not take that as
100% reliable.  But assuming the plane was on the reef flat, how
difficult might it be for one or two people to push it to somewhere
where it might be more sheltered or less likely to get washed out?
That I suppose would depend on how smooth the reef flat is and also
the condition of the tires.  If they were flat that's going to be an
obvious problem.

Based on the reliable reports of radio signals, which most probably
came from the Electra, we know it was not totally out of fuel.  (too
low to fly very far, but it probably didn't glide in bone dry).
Which might allow for at least an attempt to try to taxi it to a
better or more sheltered area.

======================================================================== 
Date:         Tue, 4 Dec 2007 15:05:47
From:         Tom King
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

> But assuming the plane was on the reef flat, how
> difficult might it be for one or two people to push it to somewhere
> where it might be more sheltered or less likely to get washed out?

There are just too many variables to hazard a reasonable guess.  The
reef flat is pretty smooth, but it does have cracks and holes into
which a wheel could fall.  We don't know if one or more of the tires
blew out.  As you say, we don't know what shape the crew were in.
And there's noplace it could be pushed where it would be more
sheltered; the reef flat is very rough as you get close to the shore,
and the beach is gravelly and steep, so you couldn't push it up under
the trees.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Tue, 4 Dec 2007 17:42:35
From:         Alan Caldwell
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

Tom, could it be taxied under engine power "up under the
trees?" (having no evidence a wing broke or a gear collapsed)

Alan

> From Tom King for Stephen Packard
>
>> But assuming the plane was on the reef flat, how
>> difficult might it be for one or two people to push it to somewhere
>> where it might be more sheltered or less likely to get washed out?
>
> There are just too many variables to hazard a reasonable guess.  The
> reef flat is pretty smooth, but it does have cracks and holes into
> which a wheel could fall.  We don't know if one or more of the tires
> blew out.  As you say, we don't know what shape the crew were in.
> And there's noplace it could be pushed where it would be more
> sheltered; the reef flat is very rough as you get close to the shore,
> and the beach is gravelly and steep, so you couldn't push it up under
> the trees.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Tue, 4 Dec 2007 17:43:06
From:         Alan Caldwell
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

Stephan, based on my fuel calculations and due respect for Elgen
(which I did for a living in the USAF) I estimate the Electra had 150
gallons of fuel left at 08:44 Local. Obviously there are unknowns
that could affect that to a small degree. IF, IF, IF the plane used
38 GPH from that point on it had close to four hours of flying time
left, give or take. Some may say that Earhart could throttle back a
bit and use less fuel per hour. That's correct but the plane will go
slower. Doing so does not increase range, only air time. The winds at
Howland were light but from the East. No help there but no hindrance
either. Still that gives adequate time to fly to Niku and have
reasonable fuel on landing. Figure she can make roughly 150 mph
ground speed or better with a light airplane. The distance IF she was
at Howland is 352 nm or 405 sm. There is good reason to believe she
was SE or SW of Howland so the distance would be less.

Some believe she had to be at least 20 miles south of Baker but given
Baker and Howland are 40 miles apart she could have split the middle
and not seen either.

To me it looks like she could have landed with an hour's worth of
fuel which certainly could have lasted a week for running an engine
for radio power or even taxi the plane a little. I don't really see
that a collapsed landing gear would have been that much of a problem.
It wasn't to Harrison Ford and Ann Heche. <G>

I'm being facetious, of course, BUT let's look at that for a minute.
They have a left gear collapsed. I would start looking around for
something to use as a lever to lift the left wing and prop it up. The
next task is to get the gear back down and brace it so that it will
hold position. You folks who have been vacationing at Niku year after
year (kidding) no doubt have a good handle on the debris that's
there. What would you use to master that task?

Alan
======================================================================== 
Date:         Tue, 4 Dec 2007 20:40:04
From:         Stephen Packard
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

I don't know that necessarily going under the trees would be feasible
or even favorable.   I guess the question I am getting at is that
there's the possibility the aircraft could have been moved, at least
slightly either by taxiing it or by simply pushing it.   We don't
know that it was or wasn't but it is a possibility.   Thus the
question is where would you put it?   You'd probably want to put it
somewhere where it would be less subject to getting washed away or
cut off by the tide.   I think if you landed on the reef flat and
we're able to, you might consider taking the plane up onto the beach,
or perhaps to part of the reef that was relatively sheltered or at
least not as subject to tides.

My guess is that if I landed on an island the first thing I'd do is
park the aircraft, if I could, somewhere relatively safe, or at least
try to land somewhere safe.   Get out and look around.  Try the radio
a few times and then try to scope out the island.   The norwhich city
is the obvious sign of human activity.   So I'd probably start there
and near the challel and look around a bit.   If I couldn't find
anyone I'd go back.  As time goes on I'd be more compelled to start
going to the far side of the island and seeking inhabitants or
possibly fresh water or something.   So I'm thinking that if you look
at it as time goes on you become more and more likely to leave the
landing area as you get desperate.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Tue, 4 Dec 2007 20:41:36
From:         Stephen Packard
Subject:      Color Arial Photo of Niku (any idea of the date)

I've seen the photo on this page a couple of times.  I think tighar
may have it on one of the sites somwehre:  http://www.kiritours.com/
Data/maps/Gardener.htm

It's the island taken from an aircraft looking at it from a distance
from just north of the channel and the Norwich City.   It looks a bit
faded and it appears to be a film picture.   I'm guessing this might
be 1970's or 1980's?   I'm not sure though.  does anyone know the
source?

******************************************

That was taken by an outfit called Geomarix in 1972; they were doing
geophysical mapping of the island. They are out of business now.

Pat
======================================================================== 
Date:         Tue, 4 Dec 2007 20:42:03
From:         Tom King
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

I doubt if they could have taxied it under the trees; in fact I'm
about 99.9% sure they couldn't.  First, there's a strip of rough
coral between the smooth outer reef flat and the beach -- I mean
REALLY rough, big holes and tide pools and rough stuff in between.
Second, the beach slopes up pretty steeply; it might have been less
steeply sloping at some times in the past, but I don't know why this
might have been the case.  And it's mostly loose coral rubble, not
very good for driving a wheeled vehicle.

Re. your question about propping up the gear -- my recreational
observations would suggest that there was lots of stuff to prop it up
with -- Buka logs, pieces of the Norwich City, etc.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Tue, 4 Dec 2007 21:23:02
From:         Tom King
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

No argument with your sequence of plausible actions by the
hypothetical castaway aviator, but there's really no place on the reef
flat you could taxi to, or push to, that's sheltered, and the only
place to go to reduce the likelihood of being washed away is in
toward the shore, where the reef gets rough and full of holes, so you
wouldn't get far.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Wed, 5 Dec 2007 08:26:38
From:         Alan Caldwell
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

Thanks, Tom. It just struck me how terribly lonely and lost those two
must have been and how frustrated. Earhart seemed to be somewhat of a
pragmatist so maybe at Gardner they knew how things were going to end
up. I doubt they could have contemplated the great effort to find
them yet to come. They were not connecting to anyone via radio and
apparently did not know where they were as we have no message giving
their location. Day by day their hope must have dwindled.

Alan
======================================================================== 
Date:         Wed, 5 Dec 2007 12:08:31
From:         Rick Jones
Subject:      Betty's Diary

A posting by a detractor of the Betty's Diary event (David Billings???) said
that the messages Betty heard that day were radio transmissions from boaters
participating in a regatta, as a hoax, joke or some such.  Can anyone clarify
this for me, and has it been thoroughly evaluated?  I was unable to find the
original posting.
Rick J #2751
======================================================================== 
Date:         Wed, 5 Dec 2007 13:57:28
From:         Ric Gillespie
Subject:      Re: Betty's Diary

> Rick Jones asks:
>
> A posting by a detractor of the Betty's Diary event (David Billings???) said
> that the messages Betty heard that day were radio transmissions from boaters
> participating in a regatta, as a hoax, joke or some such.  Can anyone clarify
> this for me, and has it been thoroughly evaluated?  I was unable to find the
> original posting.

There is apparently mention in the local newspaper of a regatta in
the St. Petersburg area around the time Betty heard the
transmissions.  I'm aware of no evidence that any of the boats
participating in the regatta were equipped with voice radio (highly
unlikely in 1937), much less that someone was perpetrating any kind
of joke or hoax.  This kind of allegation is merely an example of how
desperate detractors are to find some explanation for what Betty heard.

When they finish with Betty they need to explain away Dana Randolph
in Rock Springs, Wyoming (very few regattas in Wyoming) and Mabel
Larremore in El Paso, Texas (ditto).  And if they dispose of all the
stateside receptions they need to explain who the operators on
Howland and Baker heard transmitting on Earhart's frequency and using
her call sign, or who the Pan Am operators on Oahu, Midway and Wake
were taking bearings on, etc., etc.

Ric
======================================================================== 
Date:         Wed, 5 Dec 2007 23:28:16
From:         Mike Piner
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

I keep rereading stuff, and spot new things every time,
Nikumaroro, by P B Laxton, says "Gardner Island is 280 miles south of
the equator".  Now I don't know if this is of any interest or not,
but my thought immediately was - -then the equator is 280 miles north
of Gardner Island.

     Maybe someone on a radio a few years back said "...281 miles
North...".
LTM
======================================================================== 
Date:         Thu, 6 Dec 2007 09:21:40
From:         Marty Moleski
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

> From Mike Piner:
>
>      I keep rereading stuff, and spot new things every time,
> Nikumaroro, by P B Laxton, says "Gardner Island is 280 miles south
> of the equator".  Now I don't know if this is of any interest or
> not, but my thought immediately was - -then the equator is 280 miles
> north of Gardner Island.
>
>    Maybe someone on a radio a few years back said "...281 miles
> North...".

Maybe.

I think folks have talked about that possibility in the past.

But saying that "the equator is 281 miles to the north of us" is
an odd way of talking.  "We are 281 miles south of the equator"
seems more natural to me.

And I would expect anyone who could figure out that fact would
probably express it in degrees of latitude rather than miles.

Now, if we're willing to make uncharitable assumptions about
Amelia, we might imagine that she might be capable of making
odd comments or using information Fred gave her in a
peculiar fashion.

It's a tantalizing fragment, but not one that I would personally
put much weight on.

				Marty #2359
======================================================================== 
Date:         Thu, 6 Dec 2007 10:05:54
From:         Alan Caldwell
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

I don't have the foggiest notion what "281" meant. However, it is
inconceivable to me that anyone in 1937 had the capability to measure
or calculate to that degree of accuracy under those conditions
whether it be distance or direction or anything else for that matter.

Alan
======================================================================== 
Date:         Thu, 6 Dec 2007 18:12:30
From:         Randy Jacobson
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

"However, it is
inconceivable to me that anyone in 1937 had the capability to measure
or calculate to that degree of accuracy under those conditions
whether it be distance or direction or anything else for that matter."

Au contraire!  Any competent navigator with a sextant and without an
accurate timepiece can calculate his/her latitude to that level of precision
by taking star shots, particularly on dry land.  If I remember correctly,
Fred Noonan was a competent navigator and was quite able to take celestial
readings.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Thu, 6 Dec 2007 18:12:47
From:         Mike Piner
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

The 281 North was out there, that's why they all took off
searching to the NW, thats why  the Colorado left the Pheonix group
to join the search to the Northwest , and no one really searched
Gardner.  Our Hypothesis is that if they had investigated the "recent
Habitation", they would likely have found AE,and or FN alive.  Fred
was one of the best navigators, around, and I can envision that he
"meassured on his "maps" as well as anybody.  Telling Amelia, and it
being reported via radio might be annother matter.  With good cause,
she was "very excited.
       We will never know what was said on the radio that faded out,
and no one heard it.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Thu, 6 Dec 2007 22:39:16
From:         Tom King
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

I don't remember; have we discussed the fact that Atafu Island,
formerly known as Duke of York Island, is something like 266 miles
SSE of Niku?  We've toyed with the notion that what Betty interpreted
as "New York" was actually "Duke of York."  If they had been trying
to get to Atafu, but didn't make it, it wouldn't be completely
unreasonable to be transmitting information about how far they were
north of their target, and if you're estimating from a map, 15 miles
might not be too big an error to imagine.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Thu, 6 Dec 2007 22:40:01
From:         Peter Boor
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

Good for you, Randy. And latitude by Polaris would do it easily -
Peter Boor.

> From Randy Jacobson
>
>> However, it is
>> inconceivable to me that anyone in 1937 had the capability to measure
>> or calculate to that degree of accuracy under those conditions
>> whether it be distance or direction or anything else for that matter.
>
> Au contraire!  Any competent navigator with a sextant and without an
> accurate timepiece can calculate his/her latitude to that level of
> precision
> by taking star shots, particularly on dry land.  If I remember
> correctly,
> Fred Noonan was a competent navigator and was quite able to take
> celestial
> readings.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Thu, 6 Dec 2007 22:40:34
From:         Alan Caldwell
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

With all due respect, Randy, I agree to some extent as to Noonan's
expertise but if I remember correctly Noonan's CEA was estimated at
around 10 to 15 miles. That doesn't give rise to calling a number to
that degree. I would accept "We are about 280 or so miles
from......." or "I think Howland is WNW of our position." But I don't
buy 281 anything.

In SAC I had a select crew and my navigator was one of the top
navigators and he couldn't have called 281 anything.

Alan
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 7 Dec 2007 07:31:38
From:         Hue Miller
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

> From Tom King
>
> I don't remember; have we discussed the fact that Atafu Island,
> formerly known as Duke of York Island, is something like 266 miles
> SSE of Niku?  We've toyed with the notion that what Betty interpreted
> as "New York" was actually "Duke of York."  If they had been trying
> to get to Atafu, but didn't make it, it wouldn't be completely
> unreasonable to be transmitting information about how far they were
> north of their target, and if you're estimating from a map, 15 miles
> might not be too big an error to imagine.

What kind of map did they carry and with what kind of resolution, do we
know? -Hue Miller
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 7 Dec 2007 07:33:18
From:         Reed Riddle
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

Alan Caldwell wrote:

> With all due respect, Randy, I agree to some extent as to Noonan's
> expertise but if I remember correctly Noonan's CEA was estimated at
> around 10 to 15 miles. That doesn't give rise to calling a number
> to that degree. I would accept "We are about 280 or so miles
> from......." or "I think Howland is WNW of our position." But I
> don't buy 281 anything.
>
> In SAC I had a select crew and my navigator was one of the top
> navigators and he couldn't have called 281 anything.

That was broadcast a few days after the landing as I recall.  Given
that amount of time, and using a sextant, I would be able to get my
latitude to within a couple of miles (I know this having done so).
Latitude is "easy", as you can do it with the Sun as well as with
stars as a check.  Longitude is the hard part because it depends on
having an accurate clock and accurate star positions or Sun rise/set
times.

It does depend on what Noonan had though...he needed something that
would let him take measurements to an absolute accuracy of 15
arcseconds, or enough measurements over time to build up a good
average that would be equivalent, in order to get an accuracy around
one mile.  Given that they didn't have much else to do, and that a
precise position was important, I'd bet that he spent a lot of time
on it.  With a bunch of measurements, you report the average
number...if that happens to be 281, that is what you say.

Oh, and you can't use Polaris south of the equator, and Polaris isn't
exactly on the pole in any case, so for a really accurate measurement
you have to take its variation into account.

					Reed
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 7 Dec 2007 07:33:45
From:         Randy Jacobson
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

Alan,
You're comparing real-time navigation on a moving platform, requiring both
latitude and longitude and a chronometer, to land-based navigation, where
multiple measurements over hours or days at the same point on the earth can
refine latitude to well within a mile or so. Noonan's estimate of 10 mile
accuracy was for plane-based localizations while flying, not earth-bound
precision while not moving.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 7 Dec 2007 07:34:20
From:         Dan Postellon
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

> From Peter Boor
>
> Good for you, Randy. And latitude by Polaris would do it easily -
> Peter Boor.

You can't see Polaris at Nikumaroro, it is more than 4 degrees south
of the equator.
Daniel Postellon  TIGHAR#2263
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 7 Dec 2007 15:50:33
From:         Adam Marsland
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

It's never been completely clear to me how much weight TIGHAR put on
the 281 message; whether they think it actually came from AE and FN
or not.  It doesn't seem to fit the pattern of the post-loss messages
in that it was (poorly) keyed.  I've always questioned it, myself,
but that's more on a gut level and I haven't really thought it through.

I'd be interested to know whether TIGHAR believes (obviously, this is
informed speculation) if the 281 message was more likely authentic,
or not.  (and why)
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 7 Dec 2007 15:51:13
From:         Alan Caldwell
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

Tom, I think we HAVE discussed Atafu but considering Randy's comments
on accuracy which I still take issue with (sorry Randy <G>) he is
certainly correct that from a land based position Noonan, should have
been able to do better than from a moving airplane. However, I must
add two caveats. First, I don't know what kind of platform the
Electra offered Noonan at the time he was taking celestial. Maybe
good, maybe not. If it was a good platform in stable air he should
have been able to do as well as on land. Secondly if we are now
assuming Noonan had all of his faculties, a series of shots over time
should have provided him with a fairly accurate fix. In my experience
it would never be within one mile or one degree. That is the only
point Randy and I differ on.

As to what they would report I would see as rational (which they
might not have been) simply stating the location that Noonan
computed. Why say anything else? "We are at such and such
coordinates." He had to know his location to report anything. Why say
he was 281 miles from wherever?" ANYTHING other than his location
makes no sense. They were broadcasting in the blind to anyone in the
South Pacific. I'm not hearing anything that convinces me that "281"
was a distance or bearing. Indeed, that might not be what was said.
Did someone say "two eighty one" or did they say "TO ANY ONE" who can
hear this."

Alan
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 7 Dec 2007 20:03:08
From:         Peter Boor
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

Of course - dumb me - Peter Boor.

>> Good for you, Randy. And latitude by Polaris would do it easily -
>> Peter Boor.
>
> You can't see Polaris at Nikumaroro, it is more than 4 deprees
> south of the equator.
> Daniel Postellon  TIGHAR#2263
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 7 Dec 2007 20:03:32
From:         Alan Caldwell
Subject:      Re: Alan Caldwell

The difficulty, Adam is that we seem to be well settled that there
was no key on the plane so that alone would eliminate the message.

Alan
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 7 Dec 2007 20:03:56
From:         Mike Piner
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

      Gardner is actually 320 miles south of the equator.
LTM
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 7 Dec 2007 20:04:14
From:         Mike Piner
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

For Alan Caldwell.
       My Cousin Richard King was a navigator in SAC,  but I know
there were many navigators.

   It only fits howland in the situation on July 2, 1937, no wonder
they took off to search in that direction.  I think the navy blew it
by not covering the phoenix area while they were there.
LTM
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 7 Dec 2007 20:04:51
From:         Tom King
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

For Adam Marsland

> I'd be interested to know whether TIGHAR believes (obviously, this is
> informed speculation) if the 281 message was more likely authentic,
> or not.  (and why)

Adam, perhaps Ric will give you a detailed and informed answer; all I
can say is that you should disabuse yourself of the notion that
TIGHAR believes or disbelieves anything.  We're a bunch of people
with an hypothesis we're testing, and a lot of disparate views on
virtually every piece of evidence that bears on it.

LTM (who doesn't even believe in herself)
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 7 Dec 2007 20:57:14
From:         Randy Jacobson
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

Niku or Gardner is 4* 40' S, or 280 nautical miles south of the equator.

======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 8 Dec 2007 09:11:48
From:         Tom King
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

> I'm not hearing anything that convinces me that "281"
> was a distance or bearing. Indeed, that might not be what was said.
> Did someone say "two eighty one" or did they say "TO ANY ONE" who can
> hear this."

That's nice; very plausible, but how does the "north" get connected
to it?

I'm imagining a situation in which Noonan is out of it and Earhart is
trying to make sense of maps and notes that he didn't explain very
well before getting knocked in the head; she knows they were heading
for Atafu and has a note taken the last time he shot the sun, saying
they were 281 miles north of the island; she's trying to explain all
this.

Obviously there's no way to really figure this out, but it's
intriguing to speculate.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 8 Dec 2007 09:12:13
From:         Mike Piner
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

If when the airplane is trying to see Howland, they are actually
45 mi SSW of of Baker, and 85 mi SSWof Howland,  Then IT is approx
325 mi NNw of Gardner Island.  If you convert those mileages to
Nautical miles, then you are approx 85 Nautical miles from Howland,
40 Nautical from Baker, and 280 Nautical miles (approx) from
Gardner.  FN doesn't know where he was, but he could use air speed
and time flying to calculate distance traveled.

       All of this is Us in retrospect playing with a puzzle. and it
sure is fun.  It is thought provoking, and is keeping a bunch of us
busy.
LTM
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 8 Dec 2007 09:13:18
From:         Hue Miller
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

> From Alan Caldwell
>
> The difficulty, Adam is that we seem to be well settled that there
> was no key on the plane so that alone would eliminate the message.
>
> Alan

Actually, and i think i mentioned this earlier, if the antenna leadin
wire inside the plane is unscrewed at the antenna terminal at
the transmitter, a telegraph keyed message COULD be sent by
leaving the transmitter on and touching the antenna wire back
to the antenna post.

If we reckon the antenna resonant at the 6210 frequency, there
would not be a high voltage danger to the person doing this,  i
mean danger of burns, which is what radio frequency high voltage
actually does. At the 3105 channel, the antenna is higher impedance,
hence the voltage at the antenna post would be high enuff to burn
bare skin. Also possibly to arc to your bare skin if put close to the
antenna post or bared wire end.  Not talking about a massive burn
here; it's more like the experience of picking up a hot match head
or a burn from a candle or tip on a soldering pencil - leaves white
burned skin and suggests you let go in a hurry.

As to what it would sound like at the receiving end, it would sound
a little strange, but how strange, i don't know. There would be some
effect from the transmitter high voltage supply laboring down as the
antenna loads the transmitter, at the start of each character as you
touch the wire to the antenna post, but i don't think this is a deal-
breaking problem.  If i recall, the transmitter has timed-sequence
relays in it to turn on the separate parts, etc. and to prevent it
from being powered up before the load ( antenna ) is switched
away from the receiver and onto the transmitter. Besides not
sending constant level well-formed characters as heard at the receiving
end, running the transmitter without a load -the antenna- presents
some danger to the transmitter internals, but in an emergency you
disregard transmitter longevity.
As for the morse character formation, that depends on the
skill of the sender. Without placing any judgement on the authenticity
of any message, i say i believe this way of sending a telegraphic keyed
message quite do-able. Certainly there were a lot of stations on the
air with worse sounding signals than this. Ship stations were notorious.
-Hue Miller
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 8 Dec 2007 09:13:46
From:         Alan Caldwell
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

At least we all agree on that, Tom.

Alan

> We're a bunch of people with an hypothesis we're testing, and a lot
> of disparate views on
> virtually every piece of evidence that bears on it.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 8 Dec 2007 09:14:25
From:         Adam Marsland
Subject:      Re: 281 message

Well, I do understand that.  But when you live with something as long
and in as much detail as the TIGHAR crew, you have at least an
informed opinion, and that I'd be curious about it.

I've just always been surprised at the amount of attention 281 has
gotten.  The message doesn't seem to fit to me.  Also the "to any
one" explanation doesn't work because it was keyed, so for it to be
"misheard" you'd have to think about Morse code mistakes and not
mishearing something.

> Adam, perhaps Ric will give you a detailed and informed answer; all I
> can say is that you should disabuse yourself of the notion that
> TIGHAR believes or disbelieves anything.  We're a bunch of people
> with an hypothesis we're testing, and a lot of disparate views on
> virtually every piece of evidence that bears on it.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 8 Dec 2007 09:15:03
From:         Tom King
Subject:      Oh well department

Going through some old files today, I came on the following note,
received in 2004 after I sent out some complementary copies of Shoes:

------------------------

Dear Tom,
I read much of your book. I was interested in your Line of Position
theory which seems very logical to me.

Thanks,

Steve Fossett

------------------------

In retrospect, I suppose it seemed logical to Earhart, too.

LTM (Who likes to know where she's going)
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 8 Dec 2007 09:54:58
From:         Marty Moleski
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

> From Tom King
>
>> I'm not hearing anything that convinces me that "281"
>> was a distance or bearing. Indeed, that might not be what was said.
>> Did someone say "two eighty one" or did they say "TO ANY ONE" who can
>> hear this."
>
> That's nice; very plausible ...

I don't have time to do fact-checking this morning, but
I woke up thinking that the 281 message was in code, not
voice--I think someone mentioned that yesterday evening.

Homonyms in spoken language ("To any one" and "281") are
probably not homonyms in code.

> ... Obviously there's no way to really figure this out, but it's
> intriguing to speculate.

Yep.  I enjoy the give-and-take on the forum very much.  ;o)

				Marty #2359
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 8 Dec 2007 09:56:03
From:         Marty Moleski
Subject:      Re: Oh well department

>  From Tom King
>
> Going through some old files today, I came on the following note,
> received in 2004 after I sent out some complementary copies of Shoes:
> ------------------------
> Dear Tom,
>
> I read much of your book. I was interested in your Line of Position
> theory which seems very logical to me.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Steve Fossett

Oh!

[ ... ]

I have just taken a moment of silence to honor
a fallen aviator ...

			Marty #2359
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 8 Dec 2007 09:56:23
From:         Dan Postellon
Subject:      Re: Oh well department

That's the scariest thing I've read today.  Dan Postellon

> From Tom King Going through some old files today, I came on the
> following note,  received in 2004 after I sent out some
> complementary copies of Shoes: ------------------------ Dear Tom,
> I read much of your book. I was interested in your Line of
> Position  theory which seems very logical to me. Thanks, Steve
> Fossett ------------------------ In retrospect, I suppose it seemed
> logical to Earhart, too. LTM (Who likes to know where she's going)
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 8 Dec 2007 11:59:12
From:         Ric Gillespie
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner / 281

> From Tom King for Adam Marsland
>
>> I'd be interested to know whether TIGHAR believes (obviously, this is
>> informed speculation) if the 281 message was more likely authentic,
>> or not.  (and why)
>
> Adam, perhaps Ric will give you a detailed and informed answer; all
> I can say is that you should disabuse yourself of the notion that
> TIGHAR believes or disbelieves anything.  We're a bunch of people
> with an hypothesis we're testing, and a lot of disparate views on
> virtually every piece of evidence that bears on it.
>
> LTM (who doesn't even believe in herself)

Tom is, of course, correct.  This is not a faith-based initiative.
Attempts to decipher the meaning of the reported phrases are, by
definition, entirely speculative and subject to endless debate. Let's
look, instead, at a few things we can be relatively sure about.

- It was received by a credible source; three operators at U.S. Navy
Radio Wailupe - so it seems unlikely that the report itself was bogus
(unlike, for example the McMenamy/Pearson receptions).
- The reported content of the message, although incomplete and
cryptic, makes it clear that this was not a misunderstood attempt by
someone to contact the plane.
- The frequency is correct.
- The call sign is correct.
- It was sent in code but with "extremely poor keying."  A hoaxer
would have to know that neither Earhart nor Noonan was adept at morse
code, and very few people knew that.

We're left with this question - if the 281 message was not sent from
NR16020, who was this hoaxer who could transmit on 3105 ( a frequency
reserved for in-flight transmissions from U.S. registered aircraft)
and knew that AE and FN were clumsy at code - and where was he/she
located so that fragmentary phrases were copied in Hawaii but not in
San Francisco?

Ric
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 8 Dec 2007 15:19:20
From:         Alan Caldwell
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

Marty, you are correct. I had long dismissed the 281 message because
it was in code and our heroes supposedly did not have sending keys
nor were they any good at Morse. Hue Miller's nice letter regarding
how our heroes could have sent Morse was excellent but I think that
was way over Earhart's and Noonan's heads. I just doubt the message
ever came from Earhart UNLESS we are wrong about them not having a
key. I have never bought the idea they left BOTH keys off the plane
to save weight. Their weight was negligible.

Alan
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 8 Dec 2007 16:01:59
From:         Mike Piner
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

     And what about all those requests to send four dashes, and
recieving four dashes, someone had a way to send morse, sounds like a
key to me.
LTM who had her key
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 9 Dec 2007 21:32:49
From:         Ray Brown
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

Voice  on 3105 kcs seems to have been reserved for aircraft use but
others seem to have it used for Morse code.
As for the rough keying, I suspect the hoaxer overheard Radioman
Thompson of the Itasca trying to advise the plane how to send code
without a key.

LTM ( Who likes to think she has the key to everything.....)
Ray. # 2634.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 9 Dec 2007 21:33:24
From:         Mike Piner
Subject:      Re: Lockheed Electra

I watched my favorite OLD movie and was surprised to see that
a Lockeed Electra was in the airplane scene at the end of Casablanca.
LTM
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 9 Dec 2007 21:34:16
From:         Adam Marsland
Subject:      Re: 281 Message

> We're left with this question - if the 281 message was not sent from
> NR16020, who was this hoaxer who could transmit on 3105 ( a frequency
> reserved for in-flight transmissions from U.S. registered aircraft)
> and knew that AE and FN were clumsy at code - and where was he/she
> located so that fragmentary phrases were copied in Hawaii but not in
> San Francisco?

OK, that answers my question, and makes sense to me.

Given that both of them were such poor keyers, the nature of Morse
code and the methodology Hue described being so sketchy, it's
reasonable to wonder if they really sent what they meant to send...
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 9 Dec 2007 21:35:05
From:         Dan Postellon
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

Maybe a different code.  I seem to remember that telegraph opperators
had a code to speed up transmissions of commonly sent phrases, like
"have arrived safely" or "money sent".  If Noonan or AE was sending
code using a cheat sheet from a book, it might be possible that these
secondary codes were included along with Morse code.
Dan Postellon TIGHAR#2263 LTM (Love that Morse)

> From Alan Caldwell Marty, you are correct. I had long dismissed the
> 281 message because  it was in code and our heroes supposedly did
> not have sending keys  nor were they any good at Morse. Hue
> Miller's nice letter regarding  how our heroes could have sent
> Morse was excellent but I think that  was way over Earhart's and
> Noonan's heads. I just doubt the message  ever came from Earhart
> UNLESS we are wrong about them not having a  key. I have never
> bought the idea they left BOTH keys off the plane  to save weight.
> Their weight was negligible. Alan
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 10 Dec 2007 07:58:32
From:         Dan Postellon
Subject:      Re: Landing on Gardner

I found the referrence to "telegraph code" on wikipedia.  It seems
that the codes were letters, not numbers.  Interesting article,
though.  Dan

> From Dan Postellon Maybe a different code.  I seem to remember that
> telegraph opperators  had a code to speed up transmissions of
> commonly sent phrases, like  "have arrived safely" or "money
> sent".  If Noonan or AE was sending  code using a cheat sheet from
> a book, it might be possible that these  secondary codes were
> included along with Morse code.
> Dan Postellon TIGHAR#2263 LTM (Love that Morse)
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 10 Dec 2007 10:17:28
From:         Tom Doran
Subject:      Electra model

A hand-made wooden model of the Lockheed Electra 10 described as AE's
is available at www.warplanes.com
Search for Earhart to find it. These folks are also known as Pacific
Aircraft and are based in Scottsdale, AZ.

I don't know whether this model is historically accurate, but it may
be of interest to TIGHAR folks. Currently it is "on sale" for $109.95
(normally $149.95).

I have a little experience with these guys. The models are
attractive, although my Dad informed me that the model of a Martin
PBM I got for him was not 100% accurate. The models are mostly made
in the Philippines. Apparently there are a couple of shops there
which make these models. No doubt they'd be cheaper for someone over
there.

If the model is credible, TIGHAR might want to use them as a premium
for donors, something like, "Donate five grand and get a model
airplane and signed copy of Ric's book."

There are also more than 100 items currently available on Ebay,
claiming a connection with AE. There are photos, some signed, books,
commemorative medals, etc. Some connections are a bit tenuous, like
signature luggage and wristwatches. Possibly some of the photos would
be significant, or be a lead to a significant collection.

Tom Doran, # 2796
Atlanta
************************************

We've worked with those folks and had them do Electra models for us;
they weren't very good and took six months. In general we find that
high-ticket items that have to be inventoried are not worth the money
and trouble; we inevitably lose on them.

Pat
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 10 Dec 2007 10:39:35
From:         Dennis McGee
Subject:      Q and Z signals?

Dan Postellon aid: "I seem to remember that  telegraph opperators
had a code to speed up transmissions of commonly sent phrases, like
"have arrived safely" or "money sent".

    You're talking about Q and Z signals, right?

LTM, who is alphabetically challenged
Dennis O. McGee #0149EC
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 10 Dec 2007 13:28:03
From:         Gary LaPook
Subject:      Re: Q and Z signals?

Here is a link to a comprehensive list of "Q" signals.  http://
www.zerobeat.net/qrp/qsignals.html

"QNH" , "QNE" and "QFE" are still heard on the radio in voice
communications when operating around the world.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 10 Dec 2007 13:28:32
From:         Gary LaPook
Subject:      Re: Q and Z signals

Here is a link to "Z" signals.

http://www.zerobeat.net/qrp/zsiglist.html

gl
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 10 Dec 2007 15:23:06
From:         Dan Postellon
Subject:      Re: Q and Z codes

I guess the Q and Z codes are possible, but look at the wikipedia
article.  There were other codes.  Dan Postellon

> From Gary LaPook Here is a link to "Z" signals. http://
> www.zerobeat.net/qrp/zsiglist.html gl
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 10 Dec 2007 21:09:06
From:         Hue Miller
Subject:      Re: Q and Z signals?

> From Dennis McGee
>
> Dan Postellon aid: "I seem to remember that telegraph opperators
> had a code to speed up transmissions of commonly sent phrases, like
> "have arrived safely" or "money sent".
>
> You're talking about Q and Z signals, right?

I believe he's talking about the "commercial codes" and telegrapher
shortcuts. I cannot believe AE or FN gave any thought to serious
Morse code sendin'. Why would they bring along a sheet of abbreviations
and codes? -Hue Miller
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 10 Dec 2007 21:09:45
From:         Rick Jones
Subject:      Radio Bearing Analysis ala Charles N Hill

While searching the web for a table to correct radio bearings for plotting on a
Mercator chart, I was directed to Charles N Hill's web site.  This site promoted
Hill's book, "Fix on the Rising Sun" (Firstbooks, 12/2000) which purports to
document the hijacking of Pan Am's "Hawaii Clipper" on 29 July 1938, by the
Japanese Navy. Hill used material from the Pan Am archives in the Richter
Library at the University of Miami, which he "analyzed" to support his claim.
Although the information is quite interesting, Hill seems to be of the
Klass/Gervais ilk. In his web site, a sidebar comment is as follows:

"[As to the data in these reports, analysis proves, absolutely, that Earhart
ditched, not in the Phoenix Islands, but in "the eastern fringes" of the
Marshalls (as Putnam put it, in a letter to the White House, in August, 1937).
My analysis was first revealed to the Amelia Earhart Research Consortium at
Purdue University, in November, 1989--ed.]"
http://www.hawaiiclipper.com/source.htm

I did not read his book, but wonder if anyone has evaluated his radio
bearing "analysis" that "proves absolutely" that Earhart ditched.
I'm quite sure this specious claim is more of the same stuff, but
wondered if anyone on our crack team ever looked at his work.

Rick J, #2751
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 10 Dec 2007 21:10:28
From:         John Barrett
Subject:      Re: 281 Message

I thought it was on a post some time ago that the voice mic itself
may have been used to key morse. I am a police officer and before we
finally got out of the stone ages and got radios with identifiers we
would occasionally get nothing more than a squelch break from an
officer who's radio wasn't working properly. A number of times we
would be forced to click the mic to answer questions posed by the
dispatcher, simple "once for yes" etc type questions to determine who
was calling, where they were, and if there was a problem (other than
the radio). Not the best system, but it worked. None of us knows
morse and even if we did the dispatchers don't so it would have been
fruitless to send code. The point is though, we could if we needed
to. Since this is pure conjecture... I figure that AE and FN gave up
on voice since no one had answered any of their calls, maybe they
were just hoarse from trying, but they figured maybe they could at
least send a carrier wave in bursts (morse) from their transmitter
that may catch someone's attention. That someone then figures out
that it's code and, voila, rescue. Kind of like the sailor in the
sunken sub who starts rapping on the hull with a wrench. At first
someone who hears it may think its just random breaking-up sounds,
eventually it has a pattern, then it is code. Ever see U-571? Same
idea. My question is, prior to a decipherable message was there a
bunch of squelches before someone determined it was code?

LTM (who was always trying to crack my code)

John Barrett -TIGAR member of unknown code
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 10 Dec 2007 21:11:41
From:         Karen Hoy
Subject:      A tidbit on Amelia

I just found the March 25, 1937 passenger manifest from "SS
Malolo." (ancestry.com has the originals and a searchable
transcription.) Here's Earhart:

Name:	Amelia Putnam
Arrival Date:	25 Mar 1937
Age:	39
Birth Date:	abt 1898
Gender:	Female
Ship Name:	Malolo
Port of Arrival:	Los Angeles, California
Port of Departure:	Honolulu, Hawaii
======================================================================== 
Date:         Tue, 11 Dec 2007 09:04:06
From:         John Harsh
Subject:      Re: Electra model

I got one of the 1/48 scale Electra 10s made by New-Ray with
Northwest markings at Big Lots for $5.  They are on eBay too.  Not
perfect, but not bad.
JMH
0634C
======================================================================== 
Date:         Tue, 11 Dec 2007 09:04:35
From:         Mike Piner
Subject:      Fred Noonan

        I read the Brines letter for the first time, and it reminded
me of Telegram from Lae in the collection at Purdue # 1921.
        Quote "radio misunderstanding and personnel unfitness probably
will hold one day have asked Black for forcast for tomorrow you check
meterologist on job as FN must have star sights stop arrange credit
if Tribune wishes more story."
        I'm not sure of date .
LTM she didn't like misunderstandings
======================================================================== 
Date:         Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:26:54
From:         Bob Brandenburg
Subject:      Re: Radio Bearing Analysis a la Charles N Hill

Rick,

You may find Research Bulletin #54 on the TIGHAR website helpful..

LTM

Bob, #2286

> From Rick Jones
>
> I did not read his book, but wonder if anyone has evaluated his radio
> bearing "analysis" that "proves absolutely" that Earhart ditched.
> I'm quite sure this specious claim is more of the same stuff, but
> wondered if
> anyone on our crack team ever looked at his work.
>
> Rick J, #2751
>
======================================================================== 
Date:         Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:42:20
From:         Marcus Lind
Subject:      Bolam theory

Dear Colleagues,
   Please see this link... "they does this again!":

www.irene-amelia.com

...I found it quite curious (but not really surprising...) that this
website apparently doesn't provide any possibility for some
"feedback" (to leave some comment etc.)...  at least i didn't see such
possibility there.  These propagandists of the Bolam theory even
don't want to be somehow challenged...       Kind regards - LTM,
Marcus Lind
======================================================================== 
Date:         Tue, 11 Dec 2007 13:59:23
From:         William Webster-Garman
Subject:      Re: Bolam theory

The Bolam scam? Debunked, debunked and debunked. http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_Craigmile_Bolam (includes a link to the
Tighar article)

LTM, who learned long ago, scams die hard when there's a buck to be
made.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Tue, 11 Dec 2007 17:02:40
From:         Rick Jones
Subject:      Re: Radio Bearing Analysis ala Charles N Hill

For Bob Brandenburg:

Of course....synaptic misfire on my part.  I hadn't connected your excellent
research piece with Hill's web site claims until I reread it.  It more than
answered my questions.  Thanks.

LTM: Who thinks Rick has gone around the sun too many times.
Rick J #2751
======================================================================== 
Date:         Tue, 11 Dec 2007 20:58:21
From:         Stephen Packard
Subject:      Re: Radio Bearing Analysis ala Charles N Hill

The radio bearing info has always been of interest to me as it seems
to be some of the most firm evidence for picking Gardner as the
start.   Also of course, as it pertains to the validity of Betty's
notebook.  I've been interested in radio for a long time and have a
ham licence (KB1IPD).   One thing that has occurred to me is that
radio propigation can do strange things sometimes and is hard to
predict with 100% accuracy.  I'm wondering if any ham radio logs
exist for that time that have been reviewed.  A lot of hams have
always kept very meticulous records of their contacts and what they
hear, and possibly even more so back then.   If any had heard the
transmissioons or had a bearing it could be logged, even if they did
not realize it was Earhart at the time.

Also, ham logs could tell us a lot about propagation.  For example,
if a lot of hams in the southern US reported contacts in the South
Paciffic around that time it would be very good evidence that the
conditions were favorable for transmissions to carry like that.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Wed, 12 Dec 2007 16:25:19
From:         Marcus Lind
Subject:      Re: Bolam theory

For William Webster-Garman

Yes, you are right - it is conclusively debunked, and not once... and
many different researchers, even despite the differing beliefs of
their own, agreed about that. Look at this report just for example:

http://www.ameliaearhartmovie.com/lostflightgrouplfg/
irenebolamessay.html

However, as you can see, the public propaganda continues... and quite
a sad thing here is that it means a continuing misinformation of
innocent curious people who just want to know more about AE
disappearance problem and can be distracted and confused by such
things...
    Best Regards - LTM, Marcus Lind

======================================================================== 
Date:         Wed, 12 Dec 2007 16:30:55
From:         Christian Bšhnke
Subject:      Noonan's morse capabilities

Moin!

One thing makes me curious: It seams to be clear to many other
contributors that neither Amelia nor Fred Noonan understood morse
code. Where is the source?

As far as I remember Noonan had the rank of captain in the trading-
navy. In those days walkie-talkies were just science-fiction.
Communication between ships in sight was by flag-signalling or by
"morsing" with a special designed lamp. In german a Klappbuchs.

My thought is as an experienced sea-man Noonan must have known morse-
code from that.

LTM  Christian
======================================================================== 
Date:         Wed, 12 Dec 2007 17:32:05
From:         Alan Caldwell
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

Not necessarily, Christian. Noonan was not the radio man. However
both Noonan and Amelia had to know Morse code because of the radio
navigation aids they used. The problem is not knowing the code, it's
sending it. supposedly neither was very proficient at sending code. I
still have difficulty accepting that Earhart would leave BOTH keyers
off the plane to save weight when they didn't weigh anything
significant. Some could be as heavy as 2 1/2 pounds but the older
ones were pretty light.

Alan
======================================================================== 
Date:         Wed, 12 Dec 2007 20:49:31
From:         William Webster-Garman
Subject:      Re: Bolam theory

So the way I see it, Amelia and Fred were on a spying mission, got
timewarped by cute aliens and wound up being captured by the Japanese
on Saipan. Nobody knows what happened to Fred (because, like, who
flippin' gives a luzz about Fred?) but Amelia was held prisoner,
maybe even tortured, until war's end when to avoid embarrassment over
the spy mission and subsequent loss of an A#1 American hero and
celebrity, they gave her a new, tamper-proof, back-dated identity in,
erm, let's see... yeah, New Jersey! As a banker! With a pilot's
licence! Fast forward a couple of decades and she's spotted at a
party by some sharp eyed guy, who met another guy who wrote a book
about it. The cover was almost blown but luckily, they were able to
get the book pulled off the shelves, fast. All those forensic studies
of facial features from photographs don't mean a thing because she
had plastic surgery in the early 1960s and besides, anyone can see
it's her. You'd have to be of lower intelligence, or a shoe salesman,
not to see it's her. What's that about shoes? All this chatter about
Nikumaroro is a red herring, to throw folks off track while Ric gets
to take free vacations on chartered yachts in the Pacific. If things
get too hot, they can always plant a salvaged Pratt & Whitney engine
block with faked serial numbers in the lagoon, then claim she landed
on Gardner and there never was any spy mission, or cute aliens.
That'll be the proof she was on a spy mission and got timewarped by
cute aliens, who were in the area trying to protect the peaceful and
wise Mu people from early global warming but you have to understand
the quantum physics of the thing. Prove I'm wrong. While you're
researching that, be sure to buy my new book about Mu and 911 at
Amazon. TIGHAR was Nikumaroro when 911 happened, say no more. I tried
to put it all up for free on Wikipedia but they say it doesn't have
enough sales yet to be a "reliable source." So because of censorship,
you have to buy the book.

LTM, who could have gotten into the downmarket book biz but would've
blushed (or giggled at all the wrong times).

>  From Marcus Lind
> For William Webster-Garman
> Yes, you are right - it is conclusively debunked, and not once...
> and many different researchers, even despite the differing beliefs
> of their own, agreed about that. Look at this report just for example:
> http://www.ameliaearhartmovie.com/lostflightgrouplfg/
> irenebolamessay.html
> However, as you can see, the public propaganda continues... and
> quite a sad thing here is that it means a continuing misinformation
> of innocent curious people who just want to know more about AE
> disappearance problem and can be distracted and confused by such
> things...
>   Best Regards - LTM, Marcus Lind
>
======================================================================== 
Date:         Wed, 12 Dec 2007 20:53:28
From:         Ray Brown
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

There is no doubt, in my opinion , that FN as an officer in the
merchant navy  was proficient in sending and receiving Morse code
with a signalling lamp. Bridge VHF transceivers were unknown in those
days.

Surely if one knows Morse code then sending a simple SOS  message
with a key would not be difficult. Even if one did not know code the
message could be written down in dot and dash form in advance. Fred's
nautical almanac would contain the Morse  Code and AE could have
availed herself of that if Fred was unable to help...
I am not sure how proficiency at receiving visual Morse code would
carry over to reading aural Morse, however.
LTM ( Who always insists that it is better to send than to
receive..... )
Ray #2634
======================================================================== 
Date:         Wed, 12 Dec 2007 20:54:28
From:         Mike Everette
Subject:      Re: Radio Bearing Analysis ala Charles N Hill

>  I'm wondering if any ham radio logs
> exist for that time that have been reviewed. A lot of hams have
> always kept very meticulous records of their contacts and what they
> hear, and possibly even more so back then. If any had heard the
> transmissioons or had a bearing it could be logged, even if they did
> not realize it was Earhart at the time.
>
> Also, ham logs could tell us a lot about propagation. For example,
> if a lot of hams in the southern US reported contacts in the South
> Paciffic around that time it would be very good evidence that the
> conditions were favorable for transmissions to carry like that.

This is, for the most part, a nice fantasy.

A good many of the hams who were active in the mid to late 30s are
now either passed away, or in nursing homes.  Much of their records
are lost.

This past summer I and some friends were involved in a very saddening
and sobering experience, concerning the retrieval and disposal of the
estate of a man who'd become licensed at age 12, in 1932, and passed
away in 2002. His estate had been settled last May and the house was
for sale.   The attic was a fabulous treasure-trove of radio
equipment and parts that border on Unobtanium in this era.  He had
home-built most of his equipment over many years and its construction
was like works of art, far better quality than much factory-made
gear.  Among his huge collection of papers were a few logs, but they
only went back to about 1950; the family had moved in the early 70s
and apparently a lot of stuff had been lost or pitched then.

   But the sad part was, no one in his surviving family shared his
interest in ham radio, and indeed they seemed to want to totally
erase any memories of him.  Highly unique memorabilia of his fifty-
plus year engineering and teaching career, including photo albums,
letters, whatever, was going to the landfill.  My friends and I
managed to save the equipment and parts but the paperwork was another
matter.  It was beyond overwhelming.  We did save many, but not all,
the photos, log books and QSL cards.

Among his things were a couple of extremely rare early home type
radios from the 1920s, one of which had been custom built by an
unknown manufacturer for a large and famous hotel.  I told his heirs
that these were worth a lot of money.  They did not care.  They
wanted them gone.  If we did not remove them, they were going to be
trashed.  Period.  I was able to get a regional museum to accept
them, but they did so kicking and screaming.  Probably threw them out
the back door of the museum later.

The moral of the story is that when you die, usually your stuff means
nothing unless it can be sold on eBay.

I hate to think how many times similar scenarios have resulted in
valuable and historically significant ham radio items being
literally hauled to the curb for the trash truck.

No one cares.  It's very sad.  And when these things are gone, they
are GONE.

73

Mike E.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Wed, 12 Dec 2007 21:24:53
From:         Karen Hoy
Subject:      Re: Bolam theory

For William Webster-Garman,

Your theory makes perfect sense. It's all the fault of cute aliens
(isn't everything?)

Jokes aside, there is a published book entitled "Legerdemain" which
is described as "a startling new book on the disappearance of Amelia
Earhart."

This is an extremely badly written, edited and indexed rehash of the
Bolam theory, by David Bowman, who needs to be sent back to 4th grade
to learn how to write coherently.

It seems that everything, from the 1938 Hawaii Clipper crash to a
French message in a bottle, were really connected to Earhart's
disappearance. And AE was really Irene!

This book makes "Amelia Earhart Lives" look like brilliantly written
research. The only startling thing is that anyone actually bought it.

Goodnight, Irene,
Karen Hoy
======================================================================== 
Date:         Wed, 12 Dec 2007 21:50:38
From:         Randy Jacobson
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

All right, look folks, let's get realistic about the use of Morse
Code in the 30's.

There's a big difference between being proficient in Morse Code and being
able to recognize it.  Yes, Fred may have known Morse Code, and may have
even passed a 3rd class radio license back in the 20's when he was a naval
officer.  In his career, Fred was not required to use radios; he had a radio
officer either aboard the ship and all PanAm flights had a separate radio
officer.

Being proficient means being able to send and read Morse Code at a rate of
at least 30 words per minute, and sometimes approaching 60 wpm.  That level
of proficiency requires nearly daily use.  Without that level of proficiency
in keying or reading/hearing Morse Code and translating that into written
words, Fred would have been helpless hearing Morse Code sent to AE and him.
Yes, they could have recognized that it was Morse, but it was going by
waaaay too fast for them to comprehend it.  Sending Morse would have been
easier, but it would have been at a speed approaching 5 words per minute,
and sounding very amateurish.  One can key using the microphone, and be able
to send Morse, but it is extremely slow, and radio operators are used to
much faster keying speeds.  The key (pun intended) is that Morse Code
requires two-way communications: if you cannot read Morse at the speeds all
operators key at, then it is simply gibberish.

This is the most likely reason (along with weight) that AE removed the key
from the Electra...without anyone aboard that was proficient in Morse Code,
what use is the key?  Not much...
======================================================================== 
Date:         Wed, 12 Dec 2007 21:52:30
From:         Mike Piner
Subject:      Theories

We should get together, write a movie script, one with all the
scenerios, that the hypothysis , and the facts as we know them, and
find someone to produce, and market it.
LTM who always wanted to be in the movies.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Thu, 13 Dec 2007 09:21:04
From:         Hue Miller
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

> From Randy Jacobson
>
> All right, look folks, let's get realistic about the use of Morse
> Code in the 30's... There's a big difference between being proficient
> in Morse Code and being able to recognize it...
> Being proficient means being able to send and read Morse Code at a
> rate of at least 30 words per minute, and sometimes approaching 60 wpm.  That
> level of proficiency requires nearly daily use. Without that level of
> proficiency in keying or reading/hearing Morse Code and translating that into
> written words, Fred would have been helpless hearing Morse Code sent to AE
> and him.
> Yes, they could have recognized that it was Morse, but it was going by
> waaaay too fast for them to comprehend it.  Sending Morse would have been
> easier, but it would have been at a speed approaching 5 words per minute,
> and sounding very amateurish.  One can key using the microphone, and be able
> to send Morse, but it is extremely slow, and radio operators are used to
> much faster keying speeds.  The key (pun intended) is that Morse Code
> requires two-way communications: if you cannot read Morse at the speeds all
> operators key at, then it is simply gibberish.
>
> This is the most likely reason (along with weight) that AE removed the key
> from the Electra...without anyone aboard that was proficient in Morse Code,
> what use is the key?  Not much...

For sake of accuracy, i comment that i believe most commercial
communications was carried out at no more than about 22 wpm
(words per minute). For example, i cite the "FOX" broadcasts that
the US Navy sent to all ships, until the end of the radiotelegraph
era. FOX was sent until 1943 at 15 wpm; then due to the increasing
message count, speed was increased to 20 wpm; this creating an
immediate challenge to some Navy radiomen who were not up to
that. Source for this item: book "Navy Re-Tread", published 1947,
if i recall. ( How did 20 words per minute accomodate all the traffic
the Navy had for its fleet and basics? It didn't - larger ships and
most  bases had teletypewriter machines. )

I also recall that the ship-shore communications i used to listen
to, up thru the early 1980s, proceeded at 18-25 wpm, no more. I also
recall from another source which i cannot pinpoint, that aircraft telegraphy
communication proceeded at about 10 wpm up to 15 wpm. Remember
that unlike many highspeed ground station operators, airborne operators
used the old typical "straight key" and not "semiautomatic" high speed
sending keys.

IF our duo had a Morse code chart it's conceivable they could have
transcribed their message into a dot-dash format on paper before sending
anything. Likely they could have not exceeded 5 wpm and even if
they HAD a standard key onboard. The sending would have stood out
in the airwaves by its slowness and amateurish characteristic, probable
frequent slip-ups in forming the right number of dots, length of dashes
and so on, plus possibly technically grounded problems if they had to
send by touching the antenna wire to the transmitter antenna connector
as i described. I do not "believe" we can from the outset rule out their
sending a telegraphy message.

Telegraph sending is generally acknowledged as easier than receiving,
taking down telegraph messages. For sending out a distress message
there is NO requirement that they be able to copy (understand)
telegraphy
messages at all. -Hue Miller
======================================================================== 
Date:         Thu, 13 Dec 2007 09:21:31
From:         Hue Miller
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

What does a telegraph key weigh? Certainly less than 1 lb.
Where did this get started, that they left the telegraph key
behind to save weight? One flannel shirt would have weighed
more. If indeed they left it behind, it was because they foresaw
no possible use at all for it. -Hue Miller
======================================================================== 
Date:         Thu, 13 Dec 2007 10:52:30
From:         Bob Lee
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

> From Hue Miller
>
> What does a telegraph key weigh? Certainly less than 1 lb.
> Where did this get started, that they left the telegraph key
> behind to save weight? One flannel shirt would have weighed
> more. If indeed they left it behind, it was because they foresaw
> no possible use at all for it. -Hue Miller

I pretty much agree. We tend to put calm, rational thought into the
situation that AE and FN were in. None of us were there, but they had
communication difficulties, mechanical difficulties and time
constraints before they even got to Lae. Having to make decisions on
what to carry on the Howland leg of the trip may not have been the
most organized and well thought out process -- saving weight at any
cost may have been the 'order of the day'. They demonstrated that the
radio wasn't really a priority by their very actions in Lae when they
couldn't successfully test and seemed to brush that problem off.

While many of the difficulties they faced were caused by their own
deficiencies, I don't think we should minimize the effects of all the
distractions, whatever the source or root cause. They were so certain
they would find Howland, they simply didn't plan for an alternative.

Bob
======================================================================== 
Date:         Thu, 13 Dec 2007 12:53:10
From:         Tom King
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

Just for the record -- the main source I know of for Earhart's and
Noonan's lack of expertise in Morse is the Chater letter, about as
good a first-hand written source as we're likely to find.  See http://
www.tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Documents/Chater_Report.html .  I
don't recall the source of the report that AE discarded her telegraph
key, but I can confidently predict that Ric does.

What I think is more interesting than speculating over what equipment
our heroes had or didn't have is the proposition that more or less
launched this thread -- that the "281 North" message could have been
a mis-keyed attempt to say something else in Morse Code.  Which leads
me to wonder: what characters in Morse are similar enough to "2" "8"
"1" and/or "N" to be plausibly thus mis-keyed?

LTM (who never misses a key)
======================================================================== 
Date:         Thu, 13 Dec 2007 13:23:35
From:         William Webster-Garman
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

Tom King wrote,

> Which leads me
> to wonder: what characters in Morse are similar enough to "2" "8" "1"
> and/or "N" to be plausibly thus mis-keyed?

Morse code's rather clever, arranged so as to make it kinda hard to
muddle letters and numbers.

Meanwhile, having read the sources years ago and watching this thread
over the past week or so, I still say the signals tend to fit someone
with so-so proficiency but a keen head on their shoulders slowly hand
keying the mic, hoping an intelligible signal would travel much
further than vox. Very stressful cycling on the transmitter by the way.

LTM, whose dreams were dashed when she couldn't find a dot on the ocean.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Thu, 13 Dec 2007 17:38:06
From:         Ric Gillespie
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

Alan said,

>> my recollection is that the source of the story is some evidence
>> they were given to someone or left in Miami to be sent to someone.
>> Is that close?

I can't quote the source off the top of my head but I recall that
somebody actually claimed to have the key that was left behind.

Ric
======================================================================== 
Date:         Thu, 13 Dec 2007 17:38:28
From:         Ron Bright
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

Tom,

The British thought that "281" was really 2 degrees 8 minutes, one
second, not miles or a bearing.
I don't know where that would put you north or south of Howland.

Ron B
======================================================================== 
Date:         Thu, 13 Dec 2007 17:39:42
From:         Gary LaPook
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

QRS    QRS    QRS
_ _ . _   . _ .   ...           _ _ . _   . _ .   ...          _ _ .
_   . _ .   ...

"Send more slowly"  "Send more slowly"   " Send more slowly"

In order to qualify for a Novice Radio Amateur Radio Operator's
License the applicant had to pass a test, sending and receiving morse
code at a rate of 5 words per minute. As his proficiency improved he
could qualify for higher levels of license, the highest level
required demonstrating proficiency at 20 words per minute.

If you can safely drive your car at 20 miles per hour you will have
no trouble driving it at 5 miles per hour but the reverse is not
necessarily true. If the navy or coast guard or professional
operators could send and receive at 20 WPM they would have no trouble
sending and receiving at slower speeds. The identification for radio
navaids even today are sent in morse code at a rate of 5 WPM and, I
believe, that was also true in 1937 so Fred and Amelia should have
been familiar with code sent at that rate.

If Fred wanted to establish two way communication with a station that
was sending too fast for him to copy all he had to do was send the
code group "QRS."

gl
======================================================================== 
Date:         Thu, 13 Dec 2007 20:38:20
From:         Tom Doran
Subject:      Pacific wrecks

Ran across an interesting website today: www.pacificwrecks.com

It's a collection of information of WWII wrecked aircraft with some
ships included. I don't know how complete it is, but there is fairly
detailed information on a lot of lost aircraft, both missing and
recovered. There is also info on the crew members. Many airfields are
described, some with maps plus "then and now" photos.

A lot of interesting data and stories.

The website organizer, Justin Taylan, is currently under arrest in
the Solomon Islands. In November, he says, he stumbled across a crew
illegally removing artifacts from Guadalcanal. After the confrontation
that resulted he and a companion were arrested. It's unclear what the
charges are currently. Initially the charge was illegally entering
the country. The legal system there seems a bit casual, and the
charges have changed a couple of times.

Tom Doran
======================================================================== 
Date:         Thu, 13 Dec 2007 20:38:52
From:         Ron Bright
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

     According to W.C.Tinus, VP of Bell labs, in a letter in 1962, he
wrote "that sometime after her disappearance, we received a small
package from PAA at Miami containing her telegraph key, cord and plug,
which she had left in a hanger there".
     I don't know if anyone ever saw or retrieved it.
[ p. 278 Osborne, Amelia My Courageous sister.

Ron
======================================================================== 
Date:         Thu, 13 Dec 2007 20:39:50
From:         Karen Hoy
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

I just found this, originally posted by Ric, in the Forum Highlights
for September 7, 2000:

In Amelia My Courageous Sister Carol Osborne reproduces the text of a
1962 letter from W.C. Tinus, Vice President of Bell Telephone
Laboratories:

I was the radio engineer who was responsible for the design and
installation of her radio communications equipment [at the Newark
Airport, New Jersey in February, 1937] and since there is apparently
still some doubt as to what her equipment consisted of, perhaps I can
clear up one or two points ...

I had been a radio operator aboard ship in my younger days and knew
the importance of being able to communicate at 500 kc over the
oceans. I persuaded Miss Earhart and Mr. Putnam on this point and
modified a standard three-channel Western Electric equipment of the
type then being used by the airlines to provide one channel at 500 kc
and the other two at around 3000 and 6000 kc ...

A simple modification also enabled transmission to be made on CW or
MCW, as well as voice, and a telegraph key was provided which could
be plugged in, in addition to a microphone for voice communication.
It was my thought that many ships throughout the world had 500 kc
radio compasses and could probably better obtain bearings if the key
were held down for an extended period while radiating modulated CW
(MCW).

I was less successful in persuading Miss Earhart of the importance of
having a qualified radio operator in her crew. I had only a short
period one afternoon at Newark Airport to show her and captain
Manning (of the United States Lines Sea Rescue fame) how to operate
the equipment.

... I did not see her equipment during the period between the first
and second starts, but had no reason at the time to believe it had
been changed.

Several months after her disappearance we received a small package
from Pan American Airways at Miami containing her telegraph key, cord
and plug, which she had left in their hangar there. Without these
items she could have communicated on 500 kc by voice and could have
sent out a suitable signal for direction finding by simply holding
the microphone button down for a time. The remainder of her equipment
peculiar to the low frequency 500 kc channel probably weighted five
or ten pounds, but apparently she did not leave it in Miami or it,
too, would have been returned to us.

He ended:

... She was equipped for 500 kc communication originally and she did
leave one item, her telegraph key, behind when she departed from Miami.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 14 Dec 2007 09:52:41
From:         Gary LaPook
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

But AE had two telegraph keys according to the radio equipment
invoice pubished in Muriel's book.

gl

> From Karen Hoy
>
> I just found this, originally posted by Ric, in the Forum
> Highlights  for September 7, 2000...
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 14 Dec 2007 09:53:28
From:         Gary LaPook
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

Any idea how big a "second" is as used for  geographic coordinates,
not for time?

Answer: slightly more than 100 feet or one third of a football field,
one sixtieth of a nautical mile.

Prior to GPS no navigator on a ship (outside the sight of land) or on
an aircraft ever knew his position to this level of precision so it
makes no sense to believe the "1" in the "281" message could possibly
refer to 1 second. the Federal Aviation Regulations only require that
celestial position fixes be accurate to 10 NM or 600 seconds of
accuracy, not one second of accuracy.

Look at it another way, if they could determine their position to
that level of precision they would have been drinking Champaign on
Howland.

gl
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:34:44
From:         Alan Caldwell
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

Thank you, Gary. The "1" makes no sense to me no matter what quantity
it refers to.

Alan

> From Gary LaPook
>
> Any idea how big a "second" is as used for  geographic coordinates,
> not for time?
>
> Answer: slightly more than 100 feet or one third of a football field,
> one sixtieth of a nautical mile.
>
> Prior to GPS no navigator on a ship (outside the sight of land) or on
> an aircraft ever knew his position to this level of precision so it
> makes no sense to believe the "1" in the "281" message could possibly
> refer to 1 second. the Federal Aviation Regulations only require that
> celestial position fixes be accurate to 10 NM or 600 seconds of
> accuracy, not one second of accuracy.
>
> Look at it another way, if they could determine their position to
> that level of precision they would have been drinking Champaign on
> Howland.
>
> gl
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:37:02
From:         Alan Caldwell
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

Gary, it would make sense to leave one and keep the second one but
not leave both. Still I'm suggesting a rationale that evidence belies.

Alan

> From Gary LaPook
>
> But AE had two telegraph keys according to the radio equipment
> invoice pubished in Muriel's book.
>
> gl
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 14 Dec 2007 22:11:10
From:         Mike Piner
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

> From Gary LaPook
>
> But AE had two telegraph keys according to the radio equipment
> invoice published in Muriel's book.

I read two keys also but not from muriel's book.  Did we have access
to the equipment invoice?

   It would make sense that to save a little weight, they would keep
one key.

    In light of the information in the letter from W. C. Tinus
referenced by Karen Hoy, is this something new or is this something
in the documentswe have accumulated.

LTM
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 15 Dec 2007 10:19:14
From:         Ron Bright
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

The two keys are mentioned in the Lockheed invoice  dated May 21,
1936.(page 180, My Courageous Sister). The second invoice below it
refers to an installation by Noonans navigating table.

What we don't know is if both keys were aboard when she took off from
Miami.

For instance,  Tribune in March 1937 lists all kinds of survival
gear, Very pistol, orange kite,flares,and a two man rubber life raft,
etc..As AE said, "If we sit down in the Pacific and stay afloat, I';d
like to be noticed."

Why wouldn't she have used those items at Gardner? Some can argue she
didn't take that stuff and noone saw it stored inside the plane.
Common sense says she would take it in view of that dangerous hop
from Lae to Howland.
LTM,
Ron
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 15 Dec 2007 10:54:09
From:         Don Jordan
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

    That's a good point Ron!  If there was  survival gear, (i.e.,
raft, food stuffs, water, Very pistol, kites, flares, etc., etc.) on
the Electra, I wonder why none of that stuff was reported as found on
Gardner in the coming months or years?  They certainly wouldn't have
had time to tidy up the island before they died!  Earhart was a
writer and kept a diary of the flight.  Surely she would have found a
way to safeguard that so GPP could finish the book they were writing.

Don J.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 15 Dec 2007 16:19:49
From:         Tom King
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

Ron Bright asks re. Earhart's possible survival gear:

<<Why wouldn't she have used those items at Gardner? Some can argue she
didn't take that stuff and noone saw it stored inside the plane.
Common sense says she would take it in view of that dangerous hop
from Lae to Howland.>>
and Don Jordan chimes in:

<<I wonder why none of that stuff was reported as found on
Gardner in the coming months or years? >>


Before we get into a whole lot of head scratching over this (actually
unanswerable) question, let me just suggest that -- assuming they had
survival gear aboard, and landed on Niku, several things could
account for it's not being seen -- or at least recognized -- on the
island by subsequent visitors:

1. For one reason or another, they didn't get the gear off the airplane.
2. They did get it off the airplane, and kept it on the beach, where
it was interpreted by subsequent visitors as flotsam.
3. They got it off the airplane, and were camped at the Norwich City
food cache, so subsequent visitors interpreted whatever they left as
Norwich City leavings (remember the 1939 New Zealand survey party's
photo of the "wreck survivors' camp" with stuff strewn all about).
4. They got it off the airplane, and left it somewhere that wasn't
inspected by subsequent visitors.

Don adds:

<<Earhart was a  writer and kept a diary of the flight.  Surely she
would have found a
way to safeguard that so GPP could finish the book they were writing.>>

I'd think so, too, and believe me, "Amelia's diary" is something we
have our eyes peeled for whenever we're on the island.  But trying to
safeguard paper products in a tropical island environment and
succeeding in doing so are two very different things.  How would you
go about safeguarding a diary -- by which we mean, quite likely -- a
number of pieces of loose paper with handwriting on them -- given
what AE might have had to work with?  Here are some possibilities I
can think of:

1. Wrap it in something like oilskin, if you have such a thing, and
put it -- well, where?  In a tree?  Under a tree?  Under a rock?
There are a lot of rocks and trees on Niku.
2. Put it in a bottle.  Interesting thought: perhaps that's why
Gallagher was so intent on getting the Benedictine bottle back from
Koata -- perhaps he thought there might be some paper in it.  And
perhaps that's why interest in it seems to wane once it's recovered,
presumably with no paper inside.
3. Put it in the small metal case that Fred bought in Africa (I'm
grateful to Ron for pointing me to AE's reference to this item).  We
found something of a size and shape that would be plausible for such
a case (rectangular, 40 cm. in one dimension), rusted to flakes next
to the fire feature in excavation unit SL-3.  It certainly could have
been a little case full of papers, but if it was left there before
Gallagher searched the site, he evidently didn't find it, and both
the case (if that's what it was) and its papers (if there were any)
are long gone now.

I know, someone's going to say "Well, Gallagher SHOULD have found it
if it was there," and we can all certainly wish that he had, but we
really don't know how thorough a search he made, or exactly where he
did and didn't look -- except it appears from the airphoto showing
the area cleared that he looked mostly on the ocean side of the
ridge, and the fire feature with the metal thing is on the lagoon
side.  We know that the weather turned rotten about the time he began
his search, and that the village and plantings were damaged, so he
may not have had a whole lot of time to search.  We simply don't know.

And someone's going to say "But Amelia would have left her diary
someplace obvious."  To which I'd say, maybe so, but "obvious" to
someone dying of thirst or infections, all alone on a tropical
island, may not be so obvious to someone coming along a few years
later.  And the island environment changes pretty fast, and can hide
things.

The bottom line is that on an island like Niku, it's not surprising
when people DON'T find things; what's surprising is when they DO.

LTM (who's scolding me for being so prolix)
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 15 Dec 2007 16:20:09
From:         Mike Piner
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

Thanks Ron, and Don, for that Info, but all that equipment must
have been tied down, "secured", so as not to go flying around in
rough weather or turbulence while flying, and it went over the reef
with the plane.
    There has been several July 3, 1937 newspapers on EBay,in one them
Paul Mantz is being quoted as saying those same item were on board.

   I wondered about the food and supplies that the crew of the Norwich
City left.  Even thou it was found in disarry, no evidence of it was
found at site "7".

      The sand may be hiding some of this.  Ocean overwash and 60
years of rust and decay,destroyed it all.

     We were so excited about the Sleeve Bearing found this year with
the part number.  Has there been any progress made, as to any
identification?
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 15 Dec 2007 16:20:38
From:         Terry Thorgaard
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

Why that stuff was never found on Gardiner?  Because:

raft:  If the thesis that they crash landed on Gardiner is correct,
there probably would have been no need for the raft.  So it might
have been left in the plane and the plane washed out to sea in a
matter of days.  Or, if it was taken from the plane & used for
shelter, it may have blown away or been buried and subsequently
deteriorated.

food:  eaten, of course.

water:  drunk

What would have been the packaging for the food and water?

Very pistol, flares (for the pistol?):  either they were both dead or
near dead by the time the naval search planes flew over, or they
couldn't get the pistol out & loaded in time.

orange kite:  Some sort of signalling device?  Same as the Very pistol.

Of all these items mentioned, I would suspect that the pistol, and
possibly the flares, should have survived the elements until the
Bevington party, and later the colonists, arrived a few years later.
But there would be no guarantee that they would have been found.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 15 Dec 2007 17:53:39
From:         Tom King
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

Regarding the Norwich City cache, Mike asks:

<<Even thou it was found in disarry, no evidence of it was
found at site "7".>>

Maybe it was; we can't tell.  Some of the thin rusted metal could
represent something like ship biscuit tins, which could have come
from the cache or from the village.  There's a smallish rusted barrel
that could have been from the cache (or from the village).  One
problem is, we don't actually know what was in the cache; nobody left
an inventory.

LTM (who says go for the cache)
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 15 Dec 2007 17:54:03
From:         Tom King
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

> What would have been the packaging for the food and water?

No data re. the food, but there's a news account that says they were
carrying water in water bags, and there's one photo showing a water
bag waiting to be loaded in the plane.  Can't tell how the water bags
were capped, but if they had corks it would be very interesting;
"corks on chains" are among the artifacts recorded as having been
found with the skeleton in 1940.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 15 Dec 2007 18:21:43
From:         Pat Thrasher
Subject:      Forwarding posts from the Forum

From Pat in her official position as Moderator of the Earhart Forum.

Yes, there have been "incidents" but also the rules have changed 
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======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 15 Dec 2007 18:22:16
From:         Don Jordan
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

You can't take a corked container in an airplane.  The pressure would
blow it out.

Don J.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 15 Dec 2007 18:30:37
From:         Alan Caldwell
Subject:      Re: corks

Uncork it.

Alan

> From Don Jordan
>
> You can't take a corked container in an airplane.  The pressure would
> blow it out.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 15 Dec 2007 18:42:37
From:         Gary LaPook
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

On page 180 of my copy of Muriel's book is an invoice from Lockheed
Aircraft Corporation dated May 21, 1936 which includes "2
transmitting keys with brackets in cock pit."

gl
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 15 Dec 2007 19:33:52
From:         Tom King
Subject:      Re: corks

This is interesting.  I'd never thought about the issue of pressure
with regard to the corks.  I wonder if it's really true that the
pressure would blow them out, considering how much give there is in a
water bag, and how porous the bag is.  And what were the options?  As
I recall from when I was cruising EBay to find bags equivalent to
Earhart's, a lot of them had clamp tops, which I should think would
be about as prone to blowing out as would a cork.  A screw cap, of
course, would be another matter.  On the other hand, if you have a
cork-top and uncork it, as Alan suggests, how do you keep it from
spilling?
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 16 Dec 2007 10:19:06
From:         Mike Piner
Subject:      Re: Corks

    One way to do it is to get all the air out and be sure that there
is a lot of slack in th container for the amount of the liquid.  If
The atmospheric pressure gets low enough, some liquids will "boil",
but i dont think Water will. then cork it.
LTM ...don't think she ever pulled a cork.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 16 Dec 2007 10:19:42
From:         Rick Jones
Subject:      Re: survival equipment

Survival gear included with a US Rubber Co. one-man WWII life raft is
outlined in their ad in an April 3, 1944 Life Magazine.  Pictured is equipment
from an opened container which looks like an over-sized sardine can with the
metal lid curled back. The caption says:

    "The one man parachute raft is provided with emergency food and water
rations, first aid kit, sea marking, bullet plugs, paddles, bailing bucket, sea
anchor, and later models even include a sail and mast and protective covering
which can be used for protection against cold, heat, and ocean spray,"
US Rubber Co Ad. (for sale on e-bay) http://tinyurl.com/2y9rgm

    The state of the art had advanced rapidly in the years between 1937 and
1944, but it reflects somewhat the equipment available in that era.

I also ran across these archived news stories which, for a fee, can be
ordered.

"LIFE RAFT REACHES HAWAII; Has Hammondsport, N. Y., Mark--Firm Made One
for Miss Earhart"
NY Times, October 8, 1937, Friday
Page 25
"A small two-place rubber life raft of the type used by fliers was found today
on the shore at Hawi at the northwest tip of the island of Hawaii."

and

"Rubber Life Raft Found Not From Earhart Plane"
The Hartford Courant - Hartford, Conn.
Date: Oct 9, 1937

LTM
Rick J #2751
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 16 Dec 2007 10:20:11
From:         Gary LaPook
Subject:      Re: Corks

A cork on a bag will not blow out because the bag itself will expand
as the air in it expands at higher altitudes thereby equalizing the
pressures.  If a cork is in a rigid bottle, such as a wine bottle,
then there will be a difference of pressure between the inside of the
bottle and the outside unless the bottle was completely full with no
air bubble.

But, even looking at that case, the cork will not be pushed out. For
proof, there are many wine bottles carried on commercial airplanes
every day and you don't find wine running everywhere. Assuming the
bottle has a bubble in it and that the bottle was corked at sea
level, the pressure inside the bottle is 14.7 pounds per square inch
(psi) The atmospheric pressure at 10,000 feet is 10.1 psi so the
differential pressure is 4.6 psi. A wine bottle cork is about 3/4 of
an inch in diameter. The area of this cork is only .44 square inches
so the force exerted on the cork is only 2.0 pounds. I don't know
about you, but I have to exert much more than two pounds of force in
order to pull a cork from a wine bottle.


gl
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 16 Dec 2007 10:20:37
From:         Rick Jones
Subject:      Re: Corks

Wouldn't it be possible to use a corked desert bag if one took the precaution
of bleeding out any air by squeezing it with the cork off, then hang the bag,
(as on the front of the car bumper) in the event the cork did pop off.  Some
of the medicine bottles they carried may have had stoppers rather than screw
type lids, also.
LTM who also blew her lid occasionally.
Rick J #2751
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 16 Dec 2007 10:21:09
From:         Don Jordan
Subject:      Re: Corks

Every pilot knows of the great pressure decrease when anything is
taken to altitude.  That's how the pressure instruments work.  I once
made the mistake of taking a sealed bag of potato chips to high
altitude in my unpressurized C-210.  Climbing through 11,500 feet the
bag popped open.  It got our attention real quick.  Also, just last
weekend I took my grandson for a ride up in the Sierra mountains.  We
had a bottle of water with a screw cap.  While up there at around
7,000 feet we finished off the water and closed the cap.  When we got
back down to the valley floor, the bottle was crushed by about half.
I can't imagine taking a porous container of liquid up in an
airplane.  I would think it would leak all over the place.  Unless it
was rubber lined inside.

Don J.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 16 Dec 2007 10:21:29
From:         Marty Moleski
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

>From Tom King:
>
> ... How would you go about safeguarding a diary -- by which we
> mean, quite likely -- a number of pieces of loose paper with
> handwriting on them -- given what AE might have had to work with? ...

Put it in a sextant box?

					Marty #2359
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 16 Dec 2007 10:21:57
From:         Mike Piner
Subject:      Sun line question

I am not a pilot or a navigator , but I know that if you are
flying  you can see "say an Island" sooner if you are higher in
elevation.  How does the charts work for the time of sunrise?   do
they give the observatin time, for you being at the location, or do
they give it (time of sunrise) for various elevations that the plane
may be flying .  I hope that is a fairly intelligent question.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 16 Dec 2007 10:22:49
From:         Reed Riddle
Subject:      Re: Corks

A full water bag should have almost no air in it.  Even if the
pressure difference is large, with so little air the force applied
will be small, so the cork should stay in place.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 16 Dec 2007 10:23:05
From:         Dan Postellon
Subject:      Re: Corks

I don't think that a cork would blow out of a cloth water bag, even
in an airplane.  Dan Postellon
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 16 Dec 2007 10:23:29
From:         Alan Caldwell
Subject:      Re: Corks

Tom, I was being cute. What I should have said was to uncork the bag
after take off and hang it so it wouldn't spill. At level off they
could recork it. There is not all that much pressure change in the
altitudes she flew so I doubt it would have been a problem in the
first place. Airlines typically pressurize to around 5,000 feet as
did all of my planes that were pressurized. The cabin never got above
10,000 feet at which altitude supplemental oxygen is not really
needed. Above that, yes.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 16 Dec 2007 10:23:50
From:         Alisdair Fleming
Subject:      Re: Corks

Surely as the aircraft climbed, decreasing pressure would tend to
pull the corks even tighter into the neck?? As the plane descended,
the water bags would return to their normal shape and no water would
ever spill. Am I missing some subtlety here?
Alisdair Fleming
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 16 Dec 2007 10:24:18
From:         Ted Campbell
Subject:      Re: Corks

When I go flying in my plane I normally either open the container
(soda) before take off and recap it at altitude or in the case of a
spare qt. of oil (today in plastic containers) open the lid, squeeze
out the air and retighten the lid.

AE/FN could have done the same with the water containers if corked
i.e. left room at the top of the bag, squeezed out the air and re-
corked the bag.  Remember, in those days (and same today when I fly)
flying much above 10,000 ft without supplemental oxygen is normally
limited to short durations of a couple of hours.

Ted Campbell
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 16 Dec 2007 10:25:05
From:         Skeet Gifford
Subject:      Re: Corks

To Alan, Don and Tom

1. Those of us who live in Denver (and higher elevations) routinely
receive items packed at sea level in which the plastic air-tight wrap
has expanded, making the surface tight as a drum. Even our double-
pane windows are specially manufactured for this altitude, with the
pressure between the panes reduced. In these examples, there is a
significant amount of air trapped in the package or between the panes
of glass.

2. Canvas water bags, such as the one photographed in AE's inventory,
were used routinely during the 1930s and 40s to carry water on long
driving trips. The early ones were closed with a cork on a chain.
They were usually hung on an outside door handle or the bumper. The
slight seepage and subsequent evaporation kept the contents cool (or
so I am told) for drinking. However, I suspect that the primary
purpose was to replenish radiator coolant. If the bag was filled at a
lower elevation and the car traversed one of our mountain passes, the
pressure change would be at least as great as that which the L-10E
experienced enroute to Howland. My view is that the bag would have
easily expanded to accommodate expansion of the small amount of air
in the bag and the cork would remain in place.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 16 Dec 2007 10:25:31
From:         Ted Campbell
Subject:      AE's radio habits

Do we know if AE used radio direction finding aids on her first
attempt into Hawaii?  Would she have tuned into the commercial station
(s) in Hawaii and followed the beam in and if so would she have used
the Loop antenna on top of the plane to zero in on the signal?  Or
was there another method of zeroing in on the signal without the use
of the Loop antenna?

What I am trying to get straight in my mind is how familiar AE was
with her directional finding equipment and the use of the 500kc
"emergency frequency" channel on her radio.

If you reread W. C. Tinus' letter of 1962 it seems that AE radio set
up was fairly simple:
      The radio was a modified 3 channel Western Electric - 500kc,
3000kc (3105) and 6000kc (6210).
      The telegraph key was a plug-in, not a built-in or hardwired
device.
      The radio equipment was capable of sending a Morse code signal
by simply holding down the mic key.
      The 500kc signal capability of the radio didn't seem to have any
special circuitry to protect the equipment located under the front
seat. i.e. no continuous operation while sending Morse code just the
same on/off operation if using voice via the mic.

These observations beg the following questions:
      If the radio was modified as Tinus describes, the telegraph key
wasn't really needed - and AE simply left it behind.  Less clutter in
the cockpit, etc., can anyone suggest a more plausible reason?
Weight of the key doesn't seem to be significant.
      If the radio was as simple as Tinus describes what was the
purpose of any modifications to the antenna system while the plane
was in Miami on the second go?
      Tinus stated that the radio was a 3 channel setup.  I guess that
in the 3000kc and 6000kc range some fine tuning was necessary/
possible to dial in the frequencies of 3105 and 6210 respectively is
this correct?  What about the 500kc channel - fixed or did it have to
be fined tuned as well?
      In all the transmissions made "post lost" do we have any voice
transmissions on 500kc?  Tinus stated you could voice on 500kc as
well as CW using the key or mic button.
      According to Tinus he was able to persuade AE in installing the
500kc capability because "many ships throughout the world had 500kc
radio compasses ..." wouldn't this indicate the AE had at least a
basic knowledge of the radio "emergency procedures" that were common
at the time?
      Have we overlooked some "post lost" transmissions that could
have been AE holding down the mic key as her way of demonstrating
that she believed a steady key would have transmitted further and/or
would have made it easier to take a radio bearing on?

Again, just some observations that come along from time to time.

Ted Campbell
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 16 Dec 2007 10:25:56
From:         Terry Thorgaard
Subject:      Re: Corks

I suspect that the whole idea of water bags was, at least in part, to
avoid the pressure-popping-cork problem.  One wouldn't think a full
bag would be a problem:  no air at the top of the bag to expand and
push out the cork.  A partly full bag would have a pressure buildup,
but the porous nature of the bag (burlap, in my experience) would
allow the surplus air to escape.

It's strange that they were so concerned with weight that they
(perhaps) left one or both of the code keys behind, and yet brought
multiple bags of water.

My dad used to have one of those bags.  I always thought it was a
very cumbersome way to carry water.  They tend to get things wet, and
the corks can come off, making a real mess.   Hanging a couple from a
saddle of a horse might make sense, but stowing them in an airplane?
Are they still available for purchase anywhere?
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 16 Dec 2007 10:28:14
From:         Larry Turner
Subject:      Re: Corks

They did't fly a 40,000 ft. in 1937, at only 7000ft with a canvas bag
it wouldn't build that much pressure. I've drove over a 8,000 ft pass
in a car and didn't even pop a patatoe chip bag. Easy to test with a
porous water bag and small plane.

======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 16 Dec 2007 10:29:56
From:         Tom Doran
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

<<Common sense says she would take it in view of that dangerous hop
from Lae to Howland.>>

I wonder how much common sense was available to this crew. The Lae to
Howland hop seems to not have been a good choice of routing.  Maybe
an planned interim stop at an actual airfield would have been wise.

Finding Africa after a trans-Atlantic flight (or North America from
Hawaii) would be a reasonable risk, I think. Finding a flyspeck like
Howland with marginal technology and little reserve fuel was much
more chancey, at least by 21st century standards. Was it a reasonable
risk in 1937?

I don't have the sense that AE was especially conservative, but was
she seen as foolishly reckless seventy years ago?

Tom Doran

********************************************

> Maybe an planned interim stop at an actual airfield would have been
> wise.

Looked at a map of the Pacific lately?

Pat
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 16 Dec 2007 10:43:27
From:         Alan Caldwell
Subject:      Re: Corks

Yes, Alisdair. the decreasing pressure is on the OUTSIDE of the bag
so as the plane climbs it will be the pressure IN the bag that is
greatest tending to push the cork out. But as Gary said not
sufficiently to actually do it.

Alan
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 16 Dec 2007 10:53:10
From:         Alan Caldwell
Subject:      Re: Corks

Glad you mentioned that. In C-130s I flew with cases of spare oil in
cans and never once did one even alter its shape. The altitude was
near 30,000 and cabin was between 5 and 7 thousand. I have even been
depressurized at 25,000 with no effect on the oil cans, fire
extinguishers or any other container.

Alan

> From Ted Campbell
>
> When I go flying in my plane I normally either open the container
> (soda) before take off and recap it at altitude or in the case of a
> spare qt. of oil (today in plastic containers) open the lid, squeeze
> out the air and retighten the lid.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 16 Dec 2007 10:53:30
From:         Alan Caldwell
Subject:      Re: Corks

Thinking more about it, at 25,000 feet unpressurized I had, in
addition to fire extinguishers and oil cans, metal canteens, C ration
cans, cans of hydraulic fluid, bombs <G> and many other such items.
NONE showed the slightest effect.

Alan
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 16 Dec 2007 11:09:10
From:         Marty Moleski
Subject:      Re: Corks

> From Don Jordan
>
> ...  I can't imagine taking a
> porous container of liquid up in an airplane.  I would think it
> would leak all over the place.  Unless it was rubber lined inside.

Some of the canvas water sacks were designed to be soaking
wet when filled.

The water evaporating from the exterior of the bag kept the
water inside cool.

Dunno if that's the type of bag that AE and FN were carrying.

				Marty #2359
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 16 Dec 2007 11:40:37
From:         Ron Bright
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

     Recently longtime AE researcher Bill Prymak sent me note about
his conversations with Capt Al Gray, also a researcher into AE. Bill
reports that in Oct 1993 while at Bar Harbor Maine, he talked with
Gray focusing on his friendship with Noonan.  Capt Gray said " ' Fred
was a terrific navigator, best we had in the fleet, and his co called
drinking habits never became an issue on any of my flights. During
the long and tedious runs over the Pacific, I needed breaks from my
radio station and had Fred relieve me, sometimes for long periods.
His morse code in transmit and receive was very good, having a good
clean fist and could easily do  15 words a minute...' "
     This is a first hand observation. Gray's recollection however is
57 years old, but nevertheless worth considering.

ltm,
Ron Bright'
Bremerton Wa
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 16 Dec 2007 12:42:21
From:         William Webster-Garman
Subject:      Re: Noonan's morse capabilities

Tom Doran wrote,

> Maybe an
> planned interim stop at an actual airfield would have been wise.

That planned interim stop at an actual airfield was Kamakaiwi Field,
Howland Island on the morning of 2 July 1937. Kamakaiwi was built at
taxpayer expense by the Roosevelt administration more or less
specifically for AE's world flight.

Meanwhile at the time Fred was arguably the most qualified flight
navigator AE could have had with her over the Pacific. He'd helped
pioneer many Pacific air routes for Pan Am. There was some risk in
this hop but it's still surprising they never showed up. In
hindsight, it seems they hadn't thoroughly prepared themselves to use
the newer radio equipment they had on board and as Ric has shown, the
USCG wasn't all that helpful either.

Lack of training on radio protocol and failure contingencies, both in
the Electra and on Howland, is more than likely what caused them not
to see the island (and I still say the scattered clouds and shadows
on the deck couldn't have helped in spotting that flat, dark speck).

Ironically, so far as I know, no airplane has ever yet landed on
Howland Island (lots of helicopters though, they've even become a
worry since the atoll is now a bird sanctuary).

Fred's Morse code may have been ok but Betty's notebook hints Fred
may not have been ok if they were on the reef flat at Gardner. I
think the evidence tends to imply Amelia tried hand-keying the mic as
best she could. She was smart and creative, but by most accounts her
code was kinda dodgy.

LTM, who listened to the surf and heard static.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 16 Dec 2007 18:26:45
From:         Don Jordan
Subject:      Re: Corks

Airliner are pressurized to about 6 or 7 thousand feet (maybe less).
For passenger comfort they don't let it get any lower than that.
Also wine bottles are specially corked, and are in there so tightly
that you need a tool to get them out.  But you don't put it back in
with the same force.  A water bag or canteen is something a person
would be using often, and therefor it would not be corked at tightly.

Don J
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 16 Dec 2007 18:27:02
From:         Don Jordan
Subject:      Re: Corks

For Marty,

   I agree with you.  Out here we call them Desert Bags.  And they are
designed to leak a little water over time. The evaporation does helps
keep the water cool (er).   If the bag wasn't porous and you just wet
the bag down once, it would be totally dry again within 10 miles.  I
would suspect that that the water bags designed for use in early
flight were not porous.  If they were indeed designed for flight,
then I'm sure the manufacturer had built in all of the necessary
precautions to prevent a seeping water bags stored in and around maps
and such.

Don  J.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 17 Dec 2007 08:22:43
From:         Ric Gillespie
Subject:      Re: AE's radio habits

Ted Campbell asks:

> Do we know if AE used radio direction finding aids on her first
> attempt into Hawaii?

Direction finding was used on the Oakland/Hawaii flight but not by
Amelia.  Harry Manning handled that.

>   Would she have tuned into the commercial station(s) in Hawaii and
> followed the beam in and if so would she have used the Loop antenna
> on top of the plane to zero in on the signal?

When the plane was within a few hundred miles of Oahau, Manning tuned
the receiver to the Mokapu beacon and rotated the loop until he got a
bearing on the station.  Earhart then flew the indicated heading.

>   Or was there another method of zeroing in on the signal without
> the use of the Loop antenna?

No.

> What I am trying to get straight in my mind is how familiar AE was
> with her directional finding equipment and the use of the 500kc
> "emergency frequency" channel on her radio.

Earhart seems to have been woefully ignorant of her DF equipment (as
thoroughly documented in Finding Amelia).

The 5oo kcs frequency would not support voice transmissions so, after
Manning quit, with no one aboard who could send or receive code, the
frequency was essentially useless. That's why she decided not to have
the trailing wire antenna (necessary for transmitting on 500 kcs)
reinstalled after the accident in Hawaii.

> If you reread W. C. Tinus' letter of 1962 it seems that AE radio
> set up was fairly simple:
>     The radio was a modified 3 channel Western Electric - 500kc,
> 3000kc (3105) and 6000kc (6210).
>     The telegraph key was a plug-in, not a built-in or hardwired
> device.
>     The radio equipment was capable of sending a Morse code signal
> by simply holding down the mic key.
>     The 500kc signal capability of the radio didn't seem to have
> any special circuitry to protect the equipment located under the
> front seat. i.e. no continuous operation while sending Morse code
> just the same on/off operation if using voice via the mic.
>
> These observations beg the following questions:
>     If the radio was modified as Tinus describes, the telegraph key
> wasn't really needed - and AE simply left it behind.  Less clutter
> in the cockpit, etc., can anyone suggest a more plausible reason?
> Weight of the key doesn't seem to be significant.

Although sending code using the push-to-talk button in the mic was
possible, it was extremely cumbersome and tough on the radio because
pressing and releasing the mic button caused the transmitter to
alternately spool up and shut down.  But she had no plans to use code
so it was not a concern.

>     If the radio was as simple as Tinus describes what was the
> purpose of any modifications to the antenna system while the plane
> was in Miami on the second go?

Radio consultant Joe Gurr in California had lengthened the plane's
fixed transmitting antenna (the dorsal V ) in a misguided attempt to
give the plane some capability to transmit on 500 kcs.  He only
succeeded in screwing up the other frequencies and the work in Miami
was apparently an attempt to ger them working again.

>     Tinus stated that the radio was a 3 channel setup.  I guess
> that in the 3000kc and 6000kc range some fine tuning was necessary/
> possible to dial in the frequencies of 3105 and 6210 respectively
> is this correct?  What about the 500kc channel - fixed or did it
> have to be fined tuned as well?

All three frequencies were crystal controlled.  No tuning needed.

>     In all the transmissions made "post lost" do we have any voice
> transmissions on 500kc?  Tinus stated you could voice on 500kc as
> well as CW using the key or mic button.

I think he's wrong.  In any event, there were no signals of any kind
heard on 500 kcs.

>     According to Tinus he was able to persuade AE in installing the
> 500kc capability because "many ships throughout the world had 500kc
> radio compasses ..." wouldn't this indicate the AE had at least a
> basic knowledge of the radio "emergency procedures" that were
> common at the time?

I don't see how that follows.  500 kcs was the international calling
and distress frequency guarded by all ships. It's as simple as that.

>     Have we overlooked some "post lost" transmissions that could
> have been AE holding down the mic key as her way of demonstrating
> that she believed a steady key would have transmitted further and/
> or would have made it easier to take a radio bearing on?

There are numerous instances when steady carrier waves were heard on
3105.  We haven't overlooked them.

Ric
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 17 Dec 2007 18:06:07
From:         Tom Doran
Subject:      Re: routing

>> Maybe an planned interim stop at an actual airfield would have
>> been wise.
>
> Looked at a map of the Pacific lately?
>
> Pat

My map shows a large body of water with continental land masses on
three sides. Would a coastal route not have been possible? A  more
northerly route across the water might have been possible, say
Philippines, Guam, Wake Island, Midway, etc. I don't know which had
airfields in 1937. They all did after the war.

My main question, though, was how did her contemporaries view the
flight, as very do-able or as a reckless stunt? What was considered
good practice, then and now, for planning fuel supply?

I wouldn't want to have a plan that required everything to go right,
then coast to a landing on the last gallon of fuel. It seems that
planning for, say, a ten per cent or two hour reserve would be a good
idea. Weather or mechanical problems could consume more fuel than you
expected.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Tue, 18 Dec 2007 09:19:53
From:         Ric Gillespie
Subject:      Re: routing

Tom Doran asked:

> My map shows a large body of water with continental land masses on
> three sides. Would a coastal route not have been possible?

The only coast that comes close to crossing the Pacific is the one
from Siberia to Alaska.  Others had circled the globe using the
northern Pacific route. Earhart's declared intention was to take the
longest way around, near the equator.

> A  more northerly route across the water might have been possible,
> say Philippines, Guam, Wake Island, Midway, etc. I don't know which
> had airfields in 1937. They all did after the war.

There may have been an airstrip or two in the Philippines but there
was none on Guam, Wake, Midway or any of the other Pacific islands -
the Carolines, the Marshalls, the Gilberts.  That's why the big fuss
to build an airstrip on Howland.  Read Finding Amelia.

> My main question, though, was how did her contemporaries view the
> flight, as very do-able or as a reckless stunt?

There was no question that it was doable, but many doubted that
Earhart could do it.

> What was considered good practice, then and now, for planning fuel
> supply?

Twenty percent reserve was standard.   She had roughly 24 hours of
fuel for the anticipated 18 hour flight to Howland - a 28% reserve.

> I wouldn't want to have a plan that required everything to go
> right, then coast to a landing on the last gallon of fuel. It seems
> that planning for, say, a ten per cent or two hour reserve would be
> a good idea. Weather or mechanical problems could consume more fuel
> than you expected.

She was playing it safer than you would, but it's also a good idea to
be familiar with the equipment you're relying upon to find your way
there.

Ric
======================================================================== 
Date:         Tue, 18 Dec 2007 14:01:06
From:         Amanda Dunham
Subject:      Re: Routing

>  From Tom Doran
>
> My main question, though, was how did her contemporaries view the
> flight, as very do-able or as a reckless stunt?

I'm sending this from work, so I can't cite the exact source, but I seem to
recall Louise Thaden saying she tried VERY hard to talk AE out of it.

Amanda Dunham
#2418CE
======================================================================== 
Date:         Tue, 18 Dec 2007 17:15:02
From:         Alan Caldwell
Subject:      Re: Routing


"She was playing it safer than you would, but it's also a good idea to
be familiar with the equipment you're relying upon to find your way
there."

Details, details. You just turn on what's off and push forward what
is back.

Alan
======================================================================== 
Date:         Thu, 20 Dec 2007 18:05:45
From:         Mike Piner
Subject:      Finding Amelia

"Finding Amelia" was wonderful, I couldn't put it down.Thanks
Ric & all others.  I had read all the radio logs, from the Purdue
collection, but the continuity that was given with the reception of
the various Hams and other individuals, (Betty), was telling,  I know
that the CG and the Navy, didnt have the hindsight that we have but
their their arrogance, and refusal to go against what their fellow
servicemen had decided, "Sank to the Northeast", doomed those poor
castaways to die waiting for rescue.  Imagine hearing the messages
from KGMB, saying We Hear You, and no one ever comes.  how sad.
LTM
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 21 Dec 2007 08:17:43
From:         Adam Marsland
Subject:      Where was Amelia at 8:43?

This is another speculative question, but again I'm curious about the
opinions of some of the more knowledgeable folks on the board.

If I get the gist of Ric's sense of the evidence (which, again, is
unproven and unprovable, and I realize that), it's that when Amelia
hit the spot where Howland was supposed to be, she was actually
substantially south of the mark, and then in traveling north on the
LOP searching, stopped just short of Baker and then turned back
south.  While that's plausible, I have to admit that my own gut
feeling is that she must have been pretty close to Howland at the
time of "we must be on you and cannot see you."  My basis for this is
(1) Bellart's statement that the signal "came on like a ton of
bricks" at roughly 7:40; and (2) Noonan's professed prowess as a
navigator and his experience with Pacific navigator.  We also know
that AE was flying low, implying there was cloud cover, and there was
light cloud cover around Howland at that time.  I'm aware of the
argument that radio strength is a funny thing, but you had Bellarts
actually going outside to look for the plane, and he was an
experienced radio operator.  Clearly he thought they were nearby.

I know there are some other folks that also incline to this view, and
I'm curious to know from them:  If Amelia was close to Howland at the
time of "we must be on you", and did indeed reach Nikumaroro four
hours later (which I think is very nearly proven in FINDING AMELIA)
then:
(1) What is your theory for how she missed Howland and Baker?
(2) Did Bellarts or anyone else in the radio room give any indication
of the signal strength of the last transmission relative to the "ton
of bricks" one?  I'm aware that they were both Strength 5.

If the "ton of bricks" transmission was very near Howland, and the
8:43 one was noticeably less in strength, one could infer a number of
things that wouldn't be provable, but that would be more likely than
not.  If at 8:43 they were "running on line north and south" and were
further from Howland than they were before, and they were at
Nikumaroro later that day, then one could infer that they got to the
vicinity of Howland at around 7:40, took a look around, and turned
north.  By 8:43 they would have had to have turned south again, or
just about to, because they were running on the line north AND
south.  No further signals were heard, although by this logic, they
should have once again passed close to Howland on their way to
Nikumaroro after 8:43 (or were in the process of doing so around that
time).  This could be explained by AE switching frequencies after the
8:43 transmission, however.

I realize this is all based on pretty marginal information, but it
does stick out to me that everyone on the Itasca seemed to think she
was pretty close at 7:40, and that seems more likely to me than FN
being blown 100 miles south + a fluke of radio reception, so it made
me think more about where she was for the following hour relative to
Howland.

We can also infer that, based on the accounts of those that heard her
final transmission, AE was at least very worried and agitated by 8:43
(not surprisingly). This probably doesn't tell us much, but if she
didn't put together that she'd lost her antenna (and since she didn't
stay on the loop when listening for voice transmission, she must not
have), the fact that she could not hear Itasca's voice transmissions
must have been unnerving and may have made her believe she was much
further off course than she actually was.  If I'm not mistaken, 8:43
must have been very near the time the decision had to have been made
to follow the LOP south...it was either that or stay looking for
Howland and, if they didn't find it, ditching without being able to
make radio contact.  If you think something is in a particular place,
and all you find after searching for an hour is clouds and open sea
and radio static, it's not surprising that someone would freak out
(and, obviously, having been awake and flying in a deafening
environment for 20+ hours would push one further over the edge), and
in that context, the decision to abandon the search for Howland using
the only navigational thread available to them makes a lot more sense
to me.  The only thing that might have weighed on FN's mind, if I'm
looking at the map correctly, is that if they had stopped short of
Howland they might miss the Phoenix Islands altogether following
157-337.

If AE and FN stopped just short of Howland, how much margin of error,
mileage-wise, would there be for FN still be able to hit Niku going
down 157-337?
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:29:02
From:         Alan Caldwell
Subject:      Re: Where was Amelia at 8:43?

Adam, you are correct about this subject being speculation but it is
well reasoned speculation. Having flown in the same conditions in
both major oceans I can tell you finding Howland was extremely
difficult. Our heroes missed it but I doubt by very far. Twenty miles
off and they would have never seen the island nor would their engines
have been heard. With Baker being only 40 miles away they could have
flown between them and been oh so close but not close enough to see
either place.

Randy Jacobson has done a lot of work creating a very probable model
based on the climatological we have and shows they missed south. If
you will look at the data you can see the winds dropped off and moved
slightly counter clockwise. If Noonan couldn't pick that up on that
subtle shift they would be slightly south and long. I personally
don't believe their NW/SE search was ON a line running through
Howland as that would require them to be so far off in their
navigation to not be reasonable. To me it IS reasonable they split
the two islands and over shot. If that is correct all the LOP
searching would be for naught.

Alan
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:29:38
From:         Don Jordan
Subject:      Re: Where was Amelia at 8:43?

   It is my opinion that her statement of "Running on the line
157/337" did not mean that she was actually flying up and down that
LOP line, or that she would have flown north on that line for an
hour, and then turned around and flown back down that same line.  If
it (Howland) wasn't there on the first pass, why fly over that same
water the second time.  If it wasn't there the first time, what makes
her think it will be there the second time?  We talked about this
many times in the past.  She would most likely have jogged east or
west 10-15- or 20 miles to search new ground (water). They most
likely had some sort of search pattern going.   The heading could
have been the same 157 degrees, but I doubt she would have flown over
the same area twice.

Don J.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 21 Dec 2007 12:23:33
From:         Marty Moleski
Subject:      Re: Where was Amelia at 8:43? (Lynch, Pellegrino)

>  From Alan Caldwell
>
> Adam, you are correct about this subject being speculation but it
> is well reasoned speculation. Having flown in the same conditions
> in both major oceans I can tell you finding Howland was extremely
> difficult. Our heroes missed it but I doubt by very far. Twenty
> miles off and they would have never seen the island nor would their
> engines have been heard.  ...

What follows is a totally unscientific, wildly amateur guess.
You may take it with as much salt as your doctor will allow
you in your diet.  :o)

I think I heard on the forum that Linda Finch did not spot
Niku until she and her navigator were within seven miles of
it.  (After a happy hour of browsing, I see that I was wrong
about this claim.  Read on, McDuff, and cursed be he [or she]
who first cries, "Hold!  Enough!")

"In 1997, on the 60th anniversary of Amelia Earhart's world flight,
San Antonio businesswoman Linda Finch retraced the final flight path
flying the same make and model of aircraft as Earhart, a restored
1935 Lockheed Electra 10E. Finch touched down in 18 countries before
finishing the trip two and a half months later when she arrived back
at Oakland Airport on 28 May 1997" (Wikipedia).

She had GPS and 600 gallons more fuel than AE and FN did:

<http://www.allstar.fiu.edu/aero/finch.htm>

Better brakes, better props, ANR headset:

<http://www.tighar.org/forum/Highlights61_80/highlights79.html>

She had a satellite uplink for her laptop:

<http://starbulletin.com/97/05/22/news/story4.html>

And a chase plane with radar:

<http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/transportation/may97/earhart_5-28a.html>

It was an Albatross:

"He and his Albatross, which can land on water and ground, garnered a
measure of global fame in 1997 when he circled the world accompanying
Texas aviator Linda Finch on her re-creation of 1930s aviator Amelia
Earhart's last flight. Ms. Finch's journey was filmed from Mr.
Dennis' two-engine plane, which also escorted Ms. Finch in case she
needed help"
<http://www.almanacnews.com/morgue/2000/2000_09_27.dennis.html>.

"For World Flight 1997, Linda's team included two navigators, a staff
in charge of promotional details, and Pratt and Whitney personnel"
<http://www.christianitytoday.com/tc/7r6/7r6072.html>.

She dropped three wreaths at Howland:

<http://www.zontapikespeak.org/zonta_amelia.html>

Has anybody watched her DVD about the flight?

<http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0006MXD7E?
tag=lucidcafe&link_code=as2&creativeASIN=B0006MXD7E&creative=374929&camp
=211189>

DRAT!  Time for the application of salt to this whole [blessed] post!
It was Pellegrino, not Lynch, who didn't see the island until within
ten miles or so (1967 vs. 1997 recreation flights):

> Thu, 24 Apr 2003 11:54:53 ED
> From:         Ross Devitt
> Subject:      Re: Ric Quixote/Man of La Nikumaroro

> Ric wrote:

>> Your nine miles is dead wrong but, from a practical standpoint,probably not
>> far off.  Pellegrino had a very hard time finding Howland from a thousand
>> feet under weather conditions that were probably similar to those on July 2,
>> 1937.  They saw it from an estimated ten miles away after much searching.

> We've all read the "log" of Finch's flight, but did Pellegrino publish
> anything other than what appeared in National Geographic?

> Th' WOMBAT

BOTTOM LINE: We have one (1) observation that would allow you to
revise your 20-mile estimate to 10, if you wished to do so.

					Marty #2359
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 21 Dec 2007 13:04:12
From:         Gary LaPook
Subject:      Re: Where was Amelia at 8:43? (Lynch, Pellegrino)

In 1967, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Earhart
disappearance, Model 10A c/n 1112 owned and maintained by Lee Koepke,
flown by Col. Donald Payne USAF and Ann Pellegrino, and navigated by
William Polhemus, flew around the world approximating Earhart's
equatorial route. The airplane has since been restored to its
original configuration as an airliner for Trans Canada Airways
(predeccesor of Air Canada) and is part of the Canadian National
Aeronautical Collection in Ottwa.

The book is titled,  "World Flight" by Ann Pellegreno
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 21 Dec 2007 13:45:42
From:         Mike Piner
Subject:      Re: Where was Amelia at 8:43

For Alan Caldwell.

> I personally don't believe their NW/SE search ....
> To me it IS reasonable they split the two Islands and overshot.

     My question would then be.  How did they find Gardner?  this LOP
thru Howland to Mckeon or Gardner was their "Lifeboat", and they
couldnt get too far away from the Time of sunrise position to be used
inconjunction with the LOP.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:34:05
From:         Gary LaPook
Subject:      Re: Where was Amelia at 8:43? (Lynch, Pellegrino)

Ann Pellegrino was inducted into the EAA Aviation Hall of Fame in 1997.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:33:32
From:         Gary LaPook
Subject:      Re: Where was Amelia at 8:43? (Lynch, Pellegrino)

In Pellegrino's book she described trouble spotting Howland because
of cloud shadows. But, when she finally did find it, the problem was
that it had been hiding behind a rain squall and so they didn't see
it till close aboard. Her navigator was Bill Polhemus, an air force
navigator, using a periscopic sextant and making the landfall on a
heading of 157¡, just like Noonan.  They had turned off the LOP when
they first encountered a rain squall and had searched around other
rain squalls looking for the island.  However, after finally spotting
the island that had been obscured by rain squalls, Pellegrino wrote
that her navigator, Bill "Polhemus thought that if we had kept going
through that first squall encountered when nearing Howland, we
probably would have been 'dead on' the island" Another testament to
the accuracy of the landfall technique.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 21 Dec 2007 15:09:25
From:         Marty Moleski
Subject:      Re: Where was Amelia at 8:43? (Lynch, Pellegrino)

> From Gary LaPook
>
> In Pellegrino's book she described trouble spotting Howland because
> of cloud shadows. But, when she finally did find it, the problem
> was that it had been hiding behind a rain squall and so they didn't
> see it till close aboard.

OK.

That certainly differs from conditions on July 2, 1937, at Howland.

> Her navigator was Bill Polhemus, an air force navigator, using a
> periscopic sextant and making the landfall on a heading of 157¡,
> just like Noonan.  They had turned off the LOP when they first
> encountered a rain squall and had searched around other rain
> squalls looking for the island.  However, after finally spotting
> the island that had been obscured by rain squalls, Pellegrino's
> wrote that her navigator, Bill "Polhemus thought that if we had
> kept going through that first squall encountered when nearing
> Howland, we probably would have been 'dead on' the island" Another
> testament to the accuracy of the landfall technique.

Thanks for filling in the blanks.

					Marty #2359
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 21 Dec 2007 15:38:36
From:         Mike Piner
Subject:      Where was Amelia

If my calculations are correct, at the time of the sunrise at
Howland, if Amelia was flying at 8000 ft, she would be 110 miles from
Howland.  200 miles out she would still be in darkness, and Noonan
probably had gotten a fix on a couple of stars.  the time reporting
between these two distances would be another matter. I dont know what
her altitude was of course.
LTM-
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 21 Dec 2007 16:22:42
From:         Gary LaPook
Subject:      Re: Where was Amelia

If you continue your calculations you will see that 110 miles from
Howland, even at 8,000 feet, the sun would not have been visible on
the aircraft at the time of sunrise at Howland.

gl

> From Mike Piner
>       If my calculations are correct, at the time of the sunrise
> at  Howland, if Amelia was flying at 8000 ft, she would be 110
> miles from  Howland.  200 miles out she would still be in darkness,
> and Noonan  probably had gotten a fix on a couple of stars.  the
> time reporting  between these two distances would be another
> matter. I dont know what  her altitude was of course.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 21 Dec 2007 17:00:25
From:         Mike Piner
Subject:      Re: Where was Amelia?

> If you continue your calculations you will see that 110 miles from
> Howland, even at 8,000 feet, the sun would not have been visible on
> the aircraft at the time of sunrise at Howland.

For Gary  La Pook

       That is a tangent line from Plane to Howland to Sun.  The sun
would be coming up both places.  Of course there is refraction, which
I didnt figure.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 21 Dec 2007 17:59:34
From:         Gary LaPook
Subject:      Re: Where was Amelia?

I don't know what you mean by "tangent line" as that term is not used
in celestial navigation. Your original post was not specific in that
it did not state in which direction the aircraft was 110 miles away
from Howland and this, obviously, makes a big difference. I presumed
you meant 110 miles short of Howland meaning somewhere off to the
west south west approximately 258¡ true since this is the course from
Lae. You also didn't specify what kind of "miles" you are using,
nautical or statute, I assumed nautical since these are universally
used in celestial navigation.

Dip of the horizon at 8,000 feet is 87' which equals 87 nautical
miles on the ground. The refraction for the observers at sea level on
Howland observing the sun rise is 35' while the refraction for the
sun rise on the horizon as observed from 8,000 feet is 45' adding an
additional 10 nautical miles that the sun rise can be seen from 8,000
feet compared with sea level. So, if you draw a line parallel to the
157¡-337¡ LOP that runs through Howland spaced 97 nautical miles
short of Howland that is the line where the sun rise would have been
observed at 8,000 feet at exactly the same time as it was observed on
Howland at sea level. If NR16020 was short of that line (meaning
somewhere to the west of it) then the sun rise would not be visible
in the plane until some time after the sun rise was observed at Howland.

gl
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 21 Dec 2007 18:02:04
From:         Gary LaPook
Subject:      Re: Where was Amelia at 8:43? (Lynch, Pellegrino)

You're right, the sky was clear for at least forty miles around
Howland on July 2, 1937 as reported by Itasca. Even if this an
overestimate there certainly existed a considerable clear area around
the island at that time.

> From Marty Moleski
>
>> From Gary LaPook
>>
>> In Pellegrino's book she described trouble spotting Howland
>> because  of cloud shadows. But, when she finally did find it, the
>> problem  was that it had been hiding behind a rain squall and so
>> they didn't  see it till close aboard.
>
> OK.
>
> That certainly differs from conditions on July 2, 1937, at Howland.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 21 Dec 2007 18:36:21
From:         Gary LaPook
Subject:      Re: Where was Amelia?

Just to make the computation completely accurate I have to modify the
numbers slightly but not the conclusion.

I had ignored the dip for the observers on Howland and assumed their
observation was taken at sea level which would have required someone
to be swimming at the time. Since the navy observers were on the
bridge of the ship their height of eye would have been about 25 feet
above sea level giving a dip of the horizon of 5' which means that
they would see the sun rise as though they were 5 NM further east
than they actually were. So allowing for the dip of the Howland
observers we have to subtract 5 NM from the placement of the parallel
line and now place it only 92 NM short of Howland which means that
the sunrise in the plane would have taken place a little later than
shown by the previous computation.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 21 Dec 2007 18:57:24
From:         Mike Piner
Subject:      Re: Where was Amelia?

Gary, thanks for the info.   No I don't know Celestial navigation.
Mine was a simple tangent line to the earth with a right triangle
using the radius of the earth, in one direction.

      So how many minutes before she could see the sun, and how many
miles (statute) would she be from Howland.  Thanks again Mike.

LTM who is celestial now.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 22 Dec 2007 08:49:48
From:         Gary LaPook
Subject:      Re: Where was Amelia?

The earth turns 15¡ per hour (relative to the sun; 15.04¡ relative to
the stars) meaning that the sunrise line moves westwards at a rate of
900 knots at the equator  (899.913 knots at  Howland which is just 48
NM north of the equator) or 15 NM per minute. So for every 15 NM that
Earhart was west of the parallel 92 NM  line her sunrise would have
been one minute later, if the plane were not moving. Since they were
flying eastward at about 2 NM per minute the plane and the sunrise
line were coming together at a rate of 17 NM per minute so it would
be one minute later for ever 17 NM the plane was to the west of the
line.

An interesting corollary to this is that when Concorde was flying
westward it was traveling faster than the sun so it would outrun the
sun causing the sun to set in the east as observed from that plane.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 22 Dec 2007 08:50:14
From:         Mike Piner
Subject:      Re: Where was Amelia?

1.584 degrees (from my right triangle)  gives 95.4 Nautical miles,
with my simple trig solution.  Not a lot of difference from yours.

Why dont you use one of the people on Howland Island instead of the
observer on the bridge on Itaska.

I can see the your computations (Celestial navigation ) is so solid.
Everything taken care of.  That is why Fred Noonan was considered the
best,  He got NR16020 right there AT Howland.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 22 Dec 2007 08:51:14
From:         Ron Bright
Subject:      USNS Amelia Earhart

Maybe already posted but the USNS AMELIA EARHART ship will be
christened on 6 April 08, 9 pm, at San Diego. As I understand it, Amy
Kleppner and many authors, celebrities and researchers plan to
attend. Big media event.
It is a public event, so some of you folks may want to go. I intend
to go.

LTM,
Ron Bright
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 22 Dec 2007 10:12:45
From:         Ted Campbell
Subject:      Re: Where was Amelia?

It just dawned (pun intended) on me that when AE said "we must be on
you but cannot see you", after she picked up the A's from the Itasca,
she spoke with the experience that she encountered at Lae when she
assumed she was to near Lae to get a minimum.

Remember, she took a test flight to check out the DF at Lae.  Is
there any record to indicate how far from Lae she was during that
flight?  This might give us a good estimate of how far away she was
at the time.

Ted Campbell
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 22 Dec 2007 16:03:41
From:         Colm O'Higgins
Subject:      Re: USNS Amelia Earhart - How To Get An Invite? 06 April 2008 -
               San Diego

This caught my attention!

That would be a trip to plan.

But how does one get an invitation...'public event'?

Would TIGHAR organise a Get Together?

Colm

(Brampton Ontario Canada)
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 22 Dec 2007 16:08:30
From:         Daryll Bolinger
Subject:      Re: Where was Amelia?

I would like to join in on this speculation that was started by Adam.

>> From Pat:
>> As moderator, I was dubious about letting this post go through, but
>> finally decided in favor, no doubt due to too much eggnog. HOWEVER--
>> speculation concerning the Marshalls, capture by the Japanese, and
>> so on is definitely off-topic. So read on at your peril, and be aware
>> that we are NOT going to be chasing these hares.

When I look back on the technological achievements that came about
during WW2 I am amazed at the creativity and speed at which something
came about. Top of the line fighter planes seemed to appear in less
than a year from drawing board to production. Problems were
confronted, imagination solved it and the American spirit produced
it. The dated historical record might show the sudden creation of a
fighter plane but ignore the years of research behind it.

One aspect of these achievements was the training of aircrews to
safely fly the long distances that the war required. The government
required Pan Am to share their Flight Control Techniques with the
military. This is why we see the appearance of Flight Control
documents and charts and graphs and yes the HOWGOZIT chart during the
war years. Well, one might argue that 1937 wasn't 1941 so there's no
connection to Earhart, Noonan and those technics. I wouldn't be
surprised that Pan Am's Engineering dept. didn't hold that
information as confidential hence the requirement to share the
knowledge in wartime. I know of one instance that a researcher saw
HOWGOZIT charts in the 1939 weight and balance for an M130 Clipper.
Who is to say that Noonan wasn't familiar with and helped develop Pan
Am's Flight Control technics in 1937 that appeared in WW2.

Those technics included using the Pacific islands as stepping stones
and not to let an airplane run out of gas miles from land. This
somewhat reduced the hazard of not finding Howland because they had a
plan for finding some landmass if they didn't.  Earhart communicated
that to Vidal when she said they would look for a nice beach in the
Gilbert's. That never publically became known because of political
considerations for Great Britain who had been wanting and pressuring
the US for landing rights in Honolulu.

Where was Amelia at 8:43 ? After extending their search for Howland
an additional half hour after AE's 30 minutes of gas left, Noonan
made the call. His navigational fixes during the night gave him winds
aloft and the Cambridge fuel analyzer gave him an accurate
consumption of fuel. When he applied that to his HOWGOZIT chart it
told him they should have only enough fuel left to get back to the
Gilbert's and that's where they were headed from a point NW of
Howland. The north to south Gilbert chain of islands would almost be
like a coast line for him to find. He probably shot LOP's for his
speed lines and would know when he got to the Longitude of the chain.

Unfortunately, because they were lost to the north of Howland their
return track displaced them to the north of the Gilbert chain into
the southern part of the Marshall chain. The "281 message" reinforces
that idea but why search somewhere that you are politically prevented
from doing so. Almost a year later Morgenthau makes the statement
that she disobeyed orders. The orders were very likely that they were
to stay away from the Marshall's because the Coast Guard and Navy
were prevented from going there if need be.

What started out as a very slow rescue response in a remote part of
the Pacific by a country who viewed Pacific aviation as a threat to
their national security turns into a capture after war breaks out in
China a week later.

Daryll

======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 22 Dec 2007 16:09:05
From:         Mike Piner
Subject:      Re: Where was Amelia

Three transmissions, 6:15 "200 miles out;  30 min later 100 miles
out; 57 min later  "must be on you".   These are pretty substantial
statements.

     Where did she get her information?  Noonan of course.

     Which one is a result of THE SUNRISE.?   When was the sunrise?
Gary La Pook calculates:

"The earth turns 15¡ per hour (relative to the sun; 15.04¡ relative to
the stars) meaning that the sunrise line moves westwards at a rate of
900 knots at the equator  (899.913 knots at  Howland which is just 48
NM north of the equator) or 15 NM per minute. So for every 15 NM that
Earhart was west of the parallel 92 NM  line her sunrise would have
been one minute later, if the plane were not moving. Since they were
flying eastward at about 2 NM per minute the plane and the sunrise
line were coming together at a rate of 17 NM per minute so it would
be one minute later for ever 17 NM the plane was to the west of the
line."

92 NM divided by 17 NM per minute  is 5.6 minutes, OR 6 minutes
later than sunrise July 2 1937 they were 92 NM from Howland.

    Now we cannot convert these to speed because these were reported
times and not the times of the actual calculations.  Is there any way
to guess how she descended from her altitude?  Did she continue on
her course while descending or wait to get to the vicinity of howland
and descend while turning and looking for Howland.  Some experienced
Pilots might have an opinion here.

     It just seems to me that these last few word from AE might have
some value in back calculating from the time of sunrise, Re the
question Ted Campbell just raised about signal strength being a factor.
   LTM
mp
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 24 Dec 2007 09:39:46
From:         Marcus Line
Subject:      Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year - best wishes to all the members
of the Group!

Lets hope the 2008 will bring to us some good developments and
progress both in personal aspect and in the AE disappearance
research... God Bless - sincerely, LTM - Marcus Lind
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 24 Dec 2007 13:39:47
From:         Alan Caldwell
Subject:      Re: Where was Amelia?

With the sun at his back, Daryll, what did he shoot for LOPs?

Alan

> He probably shot LOP's for his speed lines and would know when he
> got to the Longitude of the chain.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Tue, 25 Dec 2007 10:39:09
From:         Daryll Bolinger
Subject:      Re: Where was Amelia?

> From Alan Caldwell
>
> With the sun at his back, Daryll, what did he shoot for LOPs?
>
> Alan

Alan, I loaded up the flight sim with the 10E and set the correct
date and the time as 23:00 Z. I moved the airplane to N004 deg 30 min
and E178. I picked that Lat. because it split the open water gap
between the Gilbert's and Marshall's.

With the airplane heading at 270 deg. to hit the Longitudes at 90
degrees, the sun is off the starboard (right) wing tip and slightly
behind it, almost at it's highest point of the day. From Noonan's
seat (co-pilot's seat) it is pretty hard to see the sun without
putting your face right against the window. Turning the airplane to
300 deg for the time to take the shot would put the sun right off the
right wing tip an hour before it's highest point.

These are the conditions that Noonan would have faced if they were
flying East to West as in the original plan. I suspect the size of
the window on the right side at the Navigators station, that was
skinned over on the second attempt, would have made it easier to take
noon sun shots for his speed lines in the normal course of round the
world navigation.

Daryll
======================================================================== 
Date:         Wed, 26 Dec 2007 15:27:58
From:         Jim Haight
Subject:      Re: USNS Amelia Earhart

> From Ron Bright,
>
> Maybe already posted but the USNS AMELIA EARHART ship will be
> christened on 6 April 08, 9 pm, at San Diego. As I understand it, Amy
> Kleppner and many authors, celebrities and researchers plan to
> attend. Big media event.
> It is a public event, so some of you folks may want to go. I intend
> to go.
>
> LTM,
> Ron Bright

What type of ship is the USNS Amelia Earhart?  I am a second cousin
(a couple of times removed) of Amelia and her sister.  One of my
great grandmothers was Frances Earhart Haight.  My father and Amelia
knew each other as cousins when they were children.

Jim Haight
======================================================================== 
Date:         Wed, 26 Dec 2007 15:54:18
From:         Tom King
Subject:      Re: USNS Amelia Earhart

Jim, you can read about USNS AE in Wikipedia at http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USNS_Amelia_Earhart_(T-AKE-6).  She's a dry
cargo ship.

LTM (who prefers a dry ship)
======================================================================== 
Date:         Wed, 26 Dec 2007 15:54:34
From:         Russ Matthews
Subject:      Re: USNS Amelia Earhart

Jim Haight asks:

<< What type of ship is the USNS Amelia Earhart? >>

USNS Amelia Earhart (T-AKE-6) is a Lewis & Clark class dry cargo ship
-- and will be utilized by the fleet for underway replenishment.

LTM,
Russ
======================================================================== 
Date:         Wed, 26 Dec 2007 16:23:05
From:         Ron Bright
Subject:      Re: USNS Amelia Earhart

For Jim H.,
The USNS is a type of supply ship for the Navy. It is 691 feet in
length.For those that want more info go to NASSCO.com. I am not sure
who the sponsor is but I am going to get that information.
NASSCO is the shipbuilder, located about three miles south of San Diego.

Ron B
======================================================================== 
Date:         Wed, 26 Dec 2007 16:24:56
From:         Tom Doran
Subject:      Re: USNS Amelia Earhart

>> Jim, you can read about USNS AE in Wikipedia at http://
>> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USNS_Amelia_Earhart_(T-AKE-6).  She's a dry
>> cargo ship.

The Earhart will be the sixth of a projected 12 ships of a new class
of "fast" cargo ships designed to supply a carrier group under
operations. These ships are designed to carry dry cargo and
ammunition along with limited amounts of diesel and aviation fuel.
Search www.wikipedia.org for USNS Lewis and Clark, the first ship in
the class for more complete discussion. Only two have gone on active
duty so far.

The shipbuilder's website www.nassco.com has additional information
and photos of the Earhart and others under construction. You can also
see satellite and aerial photos of the shipyard on Google Earth or on
Microsoft Live Search (aka MSN Virtual Earth). Some of these T-AKE
ships are visible but I could not tell which ones, since there were
no dates that I could find for the photography. The shipyard is
located southeast of the Coronado Bay Bridge over San Diego Harbor.

Tom Doran, #2796
======================================================================== 
Date:         Wed, 26 Dec 2007 17:16:41
From:         Jim Haight
Subject:      Re: USNS Amelia Earhart

Tom, thank you for the excellent information.  I'll follow up on each
of the sources you  recommend.
Jim Haight
======================================================================== 
Date:         Wed, 26 Dec 2007 17:34:46
From:         Tom King
Subject:      Re: USNS Amelia Earhart

Thanks, Jim.  We like to think that the forum has answers (usually
several) to every question.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Thu, 27 Dec 2007 10:51:39
From:         Andrew McKenna
Subject:      Thoughts on bones

I've been thinking about the skeleton of the castaway found on Niku,
and the items that were found with it.  Combined with the forensic
analysis of the bones measurement, it would appear that the castaway
was most likely a "norse female".

We know of one female of norse extraction who was lost in the area,
but that doesn't mean the bones were conclusively hers.  The flip
side of that equation is if the bones were not AE's, then who's were
they?  Pondering that question triggered a few memories of my
childhood trip to the Galapagos, and in particular a book I read
since written by Dore Strauch about her time on Floreana Island
during the early 30's.

A quick web search on the history of the Galapagos shows that during
the 20's and 30's there were quite a few Europeans who emigrated to
the Galapagos including folks from Germany, and Norway seeking to
escape from the rest of civilization, and in some cases looking to
find a utopian lifestyle.  For example, see

http://www.geo.cornell.edu/geology/GalapagosWWW/Colonization.html
or
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~kpt/terraquest/galapagos/dispatches/archives/
galapagos/05.html

Of note, is one "Baroness" Wagner de Bosquet, (Eloise Wehrborn de
Wagner-Bousquet?) supposedly an Austrian, who arrived at Floreana
island by boat during the early 30's accompanied by two, possibly
three men.  She subsequently caused quite a stir in the the local
scene exactly as one might imagine a woman with 3 consorts looking to
create a sexual utopia might create.

Some unvarnished and amusing history of the Baroness can be found at
http://www.galapagos.to/TEXTS/FINSEN.HTM

But, I digress.

Of interest to our project is that she and one of her escorts
"mysteriously disappeared" in 1934, after announcing her departure
for Tahiti.

So, my question to the Forum is, what are the odds of the bones found
on NIku being from a castaway that might have originated in the
Galapagos or Tahiti for that matter?

Beyond the "Baroness" can we locate any other stories of missing
persons originating in the Galapagos / Tahiti?

For the oceanographers in the crowd, if one were sailing one's boat
around the Galapagos or Tahiti, and lost your mast or were otherwise
rendered adrift, where would you drift?

Galapagos are right on the equator at 90 degrees west Longitude, and
it is some 5000 nm to Niku.  Tahiti on the other hand, at 17 degrees
south and 149 west, is "only" 1660 nm to Niku.


Andrew McKenna
LTM (who doesn't approve of unintended drifting)
======================================================================== 
Date:         Thu, 27 Dec 2007 11:31:42
From:         Tom King
Subject:      Re: Thoughts on bones

A couple of somewhat later examples:

The cutter Wing-On, which went missing near the Marquesas in
September or October of 1940 and fetched up on Vanua Levu in Fiji in
November, containing one survivor (Fern Thompson) and the bodies of
her three companions from California.  Discussed in Sir Harry Maude's
  From a South Seas Diary, pp. 175-77.

The lifeboat of a Norwegian ship (if I'm recalling correctly, my
notes are not at hand) torpedoed in the early days of WWII near
Hawaii, that went aground on Tarawa during the strange period after
the initial Japanese invasion when the British were still running the
island; the surviving crew were hospitalized and eventually escaped
with those Brits who had the good sense to get out (including our
friend Dr. Isaac, who changed his name to Verrier shortly after
getting back to Fiji).

I wonder, though, if the fact that we don't see any fishing boats
wrecked on Niku -- or have any record of them, for that matter --
suggests that the currents are such that vessels don't easily drift
up there.  There are quite a few wrecks on McKean, which may be the
results of purposeful groundings for insurance purposes, but come to
think about it, if I wanted to wreck my ship as an insurance scam,
I'd rather do it on Niku than on McKean; I wonder what the attraction
is.

LTM (who favors staying afloat)
======================================================================== 
Date:         Thu, 27 Dec 2007 14:22:06
From:         Ric Gillespie
Subject:      Re: Thoughts on bones

Tom King writes,

> I wonder, though, if the fact that we don't see any fishing boats
> wrecked on Niku -- or have any record of them, for that matter --
> suggests that the currents are such that vessels don't easily drift
> up there.  There are quite a few wrecks on McKean, which may be the
> results of purposeful groundings for insurance purposes, but come
> to think about it, if I wanted to wreck my ship as an insurance
> scam, I'd rather do it on Niku than on McKean; I wonder what the
> attraction is.

The wrecks on McKean all seem to be relatively recent, i.e. within
the time period when radar has been standard equipment.  For an
insurance scam you need a plausible accident.  McKean, very small and
with no trees, is surely a far poorer radar target than Niku and
might be seen as a more likely site for an accidental grounding.

One of the more remarkable aspects of the Niku castaway incident is
the lack of any evidence of how he/she/they got there.  Norwich City
went aground in 1929, all of the survivors were believed to have been
rescued and there were no women aboard anyway.  Norwich City's
wrecked lifeboat was still on the beach to be photographed by the New
Zealand survey party ten years later.  The Colorado search planes saw
no wreck other than Norwich City in July 1937.  Bevington walked all
the way around the island in October 1937 but saw no other wreck. How
did the female of northern European descent and whoever owned the
part of a man's shoe that was among the objects found by Gallagher
get to the island?  If they quite literally fell out of the sky there
should at least be some anecdotal account of someone seeing airplane
wreckage on or near the shore in later years. Shouldn't there?

The fact that we're having to cast so far afield as to suggest that a
yacht that went missing 5,000 miles away ended up on Niku is a
measure of how strong the evidence has become.

Ric
======================================================================== 
Date:         Thu, 27 Dec 2007 15:10:36
From:         Tom King
Subject:      Re: Thoughts on bones

> The fact that we're having to cast so far afield as to suggest that a
> yacht that went missing 5,000 miles away ended up on Niku is a
> measure of how strong the evidence has become.

I agree, but I think it's wise to explore all possible alternatives
(So does Mother).  So imagine for a moment that the bones were
really, as Gallagher surmised (for what reason, we don't know) more
than four years on the ground.  Suppose the castaway had died ten
years before, in 1930.  Suppose, then, that the castaway fell off a
passing ship with nothing but a sextant box to hang onto as a float.
Or more plausibly, that he or she was in a small lifeboat or clinging
to a hatch cover.  It's certainly not unthinkable that a lifeboat,
hatch cover, or other such flotsam thrown up on the windward beach
could disappear in ten years -- or one, for that matter.

LTM (who reminds us of the importance of the null hypothesis)
======================================================================== 
Date:         Thu, 27 Dec 2007 21:10:05
From:         Ric Gillespie
Subject:      Re: Thoughts on bones

Tom King writes:

> So imagine for a moment that the bones were really, as Gallagher
> surmised (for what reason, we don't know) more than four years on
> the ground.  Suppose the castaway had died ten years before, in
> 1930.  Suppose, then, that the castaway fell off a passing ship
> with nothing but a sextant box to hang onto as a float.  Or more
> plausibly, that he or she was in a small lifeboat or clinging to a
> hatch cover.  It's certainly not unthinkable that a lifeboat, hatch
> cover, or other such flotsam thrown up on the windward beach could
> disappear in ten years -- or one, for that matter.

Well, let's see...we have rather a lot of evidence found at the scene
by Gallagher in 1940 and quite a bit more evidence found at the scene
(assuming it is the same scene) found by TIGHAR in 1996, 2001 and
2007.  How much of that evidence you want to ascribe to the castaway
determines how tight a fence you can build around who this person
could have been.

We can say that everything found with the bones in 1940 (the shoe
parts, the Benedictine bottle, the sextant box, the part of an
inverting eyepiece, the corks with brass chains) were beach-combed
items collected up by the castaway.  In other words, none of those
items provides a clue to the castaway's identity.  In that case, we
don't need a hatch cover or a lifeboat.  All we need is woman of
northern European descent clinging to any piece of floating debris
after she fell off the passing ship.

The more stuff we let her bring with her the more sophisticated her
means of transportation must be.  If we let her bring the woman's
shoes then she's less likely to have been swimming.  If we let her
have both the woman's shoes and the man's shoes then she needs at
least a lifeboat and maybe she even has a man with her.  If she has a
lifeboat, it's no problem to let her have the sextant box and the
rest of the stuff found in 1940 - but then we have to get rid of the
lifeboat and the man.

If we start giving her stuff we've found at the Seven Site that is
not otherwise attributable to known later activity at the site, the
fence gets a lot tighter. So far, we have two possible castaway
artifacts that are datable.  A bottle made in New Jersey in 1933 that
contained a product that included lanolin and oil; and a zipper that
was made in Pennsylvania not earlier than 1928 and, if on an item of
clothing, not earlier than 1934. (This is new information as of this
morning via research at the Hagley Library and Archive here in
Delaware.)

Talon zippers like the one we found were used on women's trousers
beginning in 1934 but not commonly until 1937.  Zippers did not
appear on men's trousers until August of 1937.  A not-later-than date
for the Niku zipper is a bit more complicated.  The Niku zipper is
brass.  Production of brass zippers ceased in the summer of 1941.
Wartime military zippers were zinc-jacketed steel. The Niku zipper
did not come from a WWII military uniform.  Production of zippers for
civilian use resumed in late 1944.  The Niku zipper was therefore
manufactured either before or after WWII.

We can withhold the bottle and the zipper from the castaway by saying
that some member of the Coast Guard Loran station brought an old
bottle of hair tonic and a pair of civilian pants from home and
somehow left them both at the Seven Site.

Ric
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 28 Dec 2007 09:59:18
From:         Tom King
Subject:      Re: Thoughts on bones

VERY interesting zipper-facts!  It may be timely to introduce the
Forum to the Eva Schiaparelli connection.

Schiaparelli was a noted fashion designer of the '30s (her company is
still in business), known for her extensive use of zippers (then a
very new thing).  There are reports that she was friendly with
Earhart, designed clothes for her, and perhaps inspired Earhart's own
brief foray into fashion design.  She also did cosmetics.  It would
be very interesting to know more about what kinds of zippers she
used, which could presumably be determined through intensive
inspection of period clothes in museums and private collections, if
there are no relevant archives.

Regarding the overall question of who the castaway was, Ric says:

<<All we need is woman of
northern European descent clinging to any piece of floating debris
after she fell off the passing ship.>>

UNLESS, of course, Isaac or Hoodless was right and Burns and Jantz
are wrong, and the bones were those of an elderly Polynesian or
European or half-caste male.  I think Kar would be the first to warn
us not to load too much certainty on her and Dick Jantz's calculations.

LTM (who's very fashionable)
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 28 Dec 2007 10:31:23
From:         Tom Doran
Subject:      Re: Thoughts on bones

Ric makes a persuasive circumstantial case that AE COULD have made it
to Niku. What would be absolute, slam-dunk proof? A serial-numbered
part from the Electra? Genetic evidence, which is seeming increasing
unlikely to turn up? Anything else?

Has anyone (not including the loonies) made a credible argument,
based on the currently available evidence, that AE probably or
definitely did not get to Niku?

Lastly, is a passing ship at all likely? I had the impression that
Niku was not in a heavily travelled area.

Tom Doran, #2796
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 28 Dec 2007 11:04:28
From:         Ric Gillespie
Subject:      Re: Thoughts on bones

Tom Doran writes:

> Ric makes a persuasive circumstantial case that AE COULD have made
> it to Niku.

Let's be clear.  Unless AE walks out of the scaevola and berates us
for taking so long to find her, ANY case for her having ended up on
Niku will be circumstantial.

> What would be absolute, slam-dunk proof? A serial-numbered part
> from the Electra? Genetic evidence, which is seeming increasing
> unlikely to turn up? Anything else?

To butcher metaphors - smoking guns are in the eye of the beholder.
The complete airplane and a solid DNA match with AE's living
relatives would still be circumstantial, but would probably be
considered sufficient by most people. A single serial numbered part?
Too susceptible to fraud. DNA is better but, as you say, elusive.

At least for the moment, what we have is a preponderance of evidence
rather than a smoking gun.  A steadily building score rather than a
spectacular slam dunk.

> Has anyone (not including the loonies) made a credible argument,
> based on the currently available evidence, that AE probably or
> definitely did not get to Niku?

Not that I know of.  As has always been the case, the most fact-based
attempts to shoot down our hypothesis come from within the TIGHAR
team - as witnessed by recent postings.

> Lastly, is a passing ship at all likely? I had the impression that
> Niku was not in a heavily travelled area.

Over the past 18 years, in the something over two months I have spent
at the island, I have only once seen another ship.  In 2001 a fishing
boat paid a visit, but that was not a case of just happening to pass
by. They were on their way home to American Samoa after a successful
commercial fishing voyage and wanted to catch some fish on the reef
as a treat for the crew.

Ric
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 28 Dec 2007 16:50:45
From:         Daryll Bolinger
Subject:      Re: Thoughts on bones

Andrew McKenna writes ;

"...Beyond the "Baroness" can we locate any other stories of missing
persons originating in the Galapagos / Tahiti?

For the oceanographers in the crowd, if one were sailing one's boat
around the Galapagos or Tahiti, and lost your mast or were otherwise
rendered adrift, where would you drift?..."

I found this interesting, from the Galapagos link that you posted,
was this excerpt ;
"...(one of those early tourists was U.S. President Franklin D.
Roosevelt, who visited the islands in 1938)..."

I wonder if he was aboard Astor's yacht the "Nourmahal"? He used to
fish off it in the Carribean. But come to think of it he couldn't be
on Astor's yacht because Roosevelt had sent him on a mission in the
Pacific during this same time period that GPP sailed on the Athene to
the Galapagos. Come to think it, we can add GPP to the list of the
Galapagos tourists. In his remorse over the disappearance of Amelia,
he and guests sailed on the "Athene" ( I think that was the name of
the yacht ) to the Galapagos sometime in Nov. or Dec. 1937.

Astor returned in late April or early May 1938 from the Pacific. His
mission and the result of it was related in a letter he sent to FDR
that is retained in the Roosevelt library. He was some what
apologetic by acknowledging the efforts that FDR had made for him,
but he was unable to visit the Marshall and that the Japanese had
made that very clear to him.

Getting back to Andrew McKenna's  question of  "where would you
drift?..."

Thor Heyerdahl, of "Kon Tiki" fame, tried to prove that Pacific
migration occurred from East to West due to the drift patterns.

Eric DeBisschop, who is familiar to the forum subscribers and my
chief suspect as the author of the "Bottle Message" found on a French
beach in Oct. 1938, did very extensive study of Pacific currents and
drift patterns starting in the 1920's. He shared his research with
the US Navy. His quest, during that Pre WW2  time period, was for the
equatorial counter current. In 1956 or maybe 1958 he was out to prove
Thor Heyerdahl and his theory wrong about the direction of Pacific
migration when he was killed. The raft that he and a couple of other
guys were on was wrecked while attempting to beach it on an island.
His last words were "we'll take her over the reef".

Daryll

======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 28 Dec 2007 16:51:20
From:         Mona Kendrick
Subject:      Re: Thoughts on bones

> From Tom King
>
> So imagine for a moment that the bones were
> really, as Gallagher surmised (for what reason, we don't know) more
> than four years on the ground.

Gallagher may not have considered that organic material breaks down faster in
the equatorial tropics than in the temperate latitudes he grew up in.  In the
British Isles, where his experience of bones on the ground may have been
limited to the occasional sighting of cow bones in pastures, it takes multiple
years for bones to progress to a dessicated, sun-bleached, chalky
appearance.  The Niku skeleton could progresss to that same stage much
quicker.

LTM,
Mona
======================================================================== 
Date:         Fri, 28 Dec 2007 22:36:28
From:         Dan Postellon
Subject:      Re: Thoughts on bones

If it was a lot older, say 1830's, it could be related to American
whaling in the Pacific.  There are documented ships in the area, with
captain's wives aboard.  I don't know of any burials of women, but
there are documented burials of sailors from this era.  Dan
Postellon  TIGHAR#2263

> From Tom King
>
>> The fact that we're having to cast so far afield as to suggest that a
>> yacht that went missing 5,000 miles away ended up on Niku is a
>> measure of how strong the evidence has become.
>>
> I agree, but I think it's wise to explore all possible
> alternatives  (So does Mother).  So imagine for a moment that the
> bones were  really, as Gallagher surmised (for what reason, we
> don't know) more  than four years on the ground.  Suppose the
> castaway had died ten  years before, in 1930.  Suppose, then, that
> the castaway fell off a  passing ship with nothing but a sextant
> box to hang onto as a float.   Or more plausibly, that he or she
> was in a small lifeboat or clinging  to a hatch cover.  It's
> certainly not unthinkable that a lifeboat,  hatch cover, or other
> such flotsam thrown up on the windward beach  could disappear in
> ten years -- or one, for that matter. LTM (who reminds us of the
> importance of the null hypothesis)
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 29 Dec 2007 10:44:44
From:         Ric Gillespie
Subject:      DNA?

Although we returned from the Niku V expedition somewhat disappointed
that we hadn't found anything that might yield DNA, a couple of
unexpected possibilities have us wondering if we might have come home
with more than we thought.

Some chunky brown stuff that Tom King collected at the Seven Site
just might be coprolite (that's petrified poop to the un-euphemized).
If it is, it could very well contain the, uh, producer's DNA.  An
expert in such things at the University of Maine says that it's not
quite like any coprolite she has studied but she was also quick to
point out that she has never studied coprolite from castaways who
were marooned on South Pacific islands. The only way to tell for sure
is to look for DNA, so the chunky brown stuff is now at a DNA lab for
examination early next year.

Other less delicate, and perhaps more promising, potential sources of
DNA are three small, irregularly shaped wafers of reddish orange
stuff that were collected during the screening of coral rubble from
archaeologically excavated units at the Seven Site. Because they were
found in the same general vicinity as two pieces of glass that we
suspect might be from a woman's compact mirror, we decided to spend
the money to have them analyzed on the chance that they might be
chunks of dried make-up from the compact.  Sure enough. The lab
reported that, "All of the elements and compounds identified in the
red wafer are consistent with an early twentieth-century cosmetic."

Aside from reinforcing the evidence that there was an early twentieth-
century compact at the Seven Site, the identification of the reddish
orange stuff as probable cosmetic raises the possibility that its
surface contains sloughed cells from the owner's face or fingers- in
other words, DNA.

LTM,
Ric
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 29 Dec 2007 16:24:36
From:         Mona Kendrick
Subject:      Re: DNA?

In what ways is the coprolite unlike others the Univ. of Maine
researcher has studied?

--LTM,
     Mona
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 29 Dec 2007 19:57:50
From:         Ric Gillespie
Subject:      Re: DNA?

Mona Kendrick asked

> In what ways is the coprolite unlike others the Univ. of Maine
> researcher has studied?

First of all I should stress that she didn't know, and we don't know,
whether the stuff IS coprolite.  She was accustomed to seeing
undigested material (seeds, etc.) that might not be present if the
person were living on a diet of fish, birds and shellfish.

Ric
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sat, 29 Dec 2007 22:33:27
From:         Rick Jones
Subject:      Re: DNA?

I had been wondering if the mouth of any medicine bottles found may contain
DNA if, for example, someone put it to their lips.  I discounted the possibility
that DNA could be assayed after that long in the hostile environment.  This
certainly sounds encouraging.
LTM
Rick J #2751
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 30 Dec 2007 17:02:04
From:         Mona Kendrick
Subject:      Re: DNA?

> First of all I should stress that she didn't know, and we don't know,
> whether the stuff IS coprolite.  She was accustomed to seeing
> undigested material (seeds, etc.) that might not be present if the
> person were living on a diet of fish, birds and shellfish.
>
> Ric

In the event that no DNA turns up in the brown stuff, here's another
possibility to keep in mind: rations put aboard the plane at Lae reportedly
included "three cakes of plain chocolate." (Sydney, Australia Daily Telegraph,
6 July 1937).  If one wonders how chocolate could last long enough to
become petrified, consider that it's rather toxic to dogs and presumably to
small animals as well.

--LTM,
     Mona
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 30 Dec 2007 17:02:29
From:         Adam Marsland
Subject:      Re: DNA?

Great news, and I've been following the new developments with
interest, as well as rereading the books and reports.

I don't know if anybody has said this yet, although I've certainly
seen it discussed as if it had been, but isn't the discovery of a
bottle containing lanolin dating from the early 20th century pretty
significant?  How often did men use this stuff in those days?  Was it
common (particularly in tropical climes), or does this directly
indicate there being a non-native female at the 7 Site at least at
some point in the time period?
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 30 Dec 2007 17:02:57
From:         Mona Kendrick
Subject:      Re: Thoughts on bones

> From Tom King on Ric's message
>
> VERY interesting zipper-facts!  It may be timely to introduce the
> Forum to the Eva Schiaparelli connection.
>
> Schiaparelli was a noted fashion designer of the '30s (her company is
> still in business), known for her extensive use of zippers (then a
> very new thing).  There are reports that she was friendly with
> Earhart, designed clothes for her, and perhaps inspired Earhart's own
> brief foray into fashion design.  She also did cosmetics.  It would
> be very interesting to know more about what kinds of zippers she
> used, which could presumably be determined through intensive
> inspection of period clothes in museums and private collections, if
> there are no relevant archives.

Without a doubt AE preferred zippers to other kinds of fasteners once they
became available.  1934 newspaper writeups concerning Earhart's fashion line
note that the skirts, blouses, jackets, hats, and jodhpurs fasten with zippers.

LTM,
Mona
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 30 Dec 2007 17:18:23
From:         Ric Gillespie
Subject:      Re: DNA?

Adam Marsland asked,

> I don't know if anybody has said this yet, although I've certainly
> seen it discussed as if it had been, but isn't the discovery of a
> bottle containing lanolin dating from the early 20th century pretty
> significant?  How often did men use this stuff in those days?  Was
> it common (particularly in tropical climes), or does this directly
> indicate there being a non-native female at the 7 Site at least at
> some point in the time period?

There has been considerable debate on that subject within the TIGHAR
team.  Hair products for men were popular in the 1930s and '40s, but
we don't really know how unusual or common it would be for a member
of the Coast Guard unit to have with him a small bottle of civilian
hair tonic on a deployment to the South Pacific.

Ric
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 30 Dec 2007 20:45:12
From:         Randy Jacobson
Subject:      Re: DNA?

Regarding the coprolite: if it was human in origin, it could also be from
Fred Noonan, Gallagher, or some of the colonists who were also in the area
and were responsible for finding the original artifacts and possibly helping
Gallagher later on.  Pinning hopes on it being from Earhart seems a bit
premature at this point in time.

LTM, who is fond of the skeptical ones
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 30 Dec 2007 20:45:59
From:         William Webster-Garman
Subject:      Re: DNA?

Adam Marsland wrote:

> I don't know if anybody has said this yet, although I've certainly
> seen it discussed as if it had been, but isn't the discovery of a
> bottle containing lanolin dating from the early 20th century pretty
> significant?

Yes, it is. For me the lanolin bottle is one more tiny shred in the
big puzzle that is Gardner Island during the late 1930s and early
1940s which stirs one to keep looking and researching.

Same goes for the traces of a compact and (maybe) pressed powder,
even if the latter doesn't yield bits of skin with intact DNA.

LTM, who grabbed her bag on the way out.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 30 Dec 2007 20:46:44
From:         William Webster-Garman
Subject:      Re: DNA?

Ric wrote:

> Hair products for men were popular in the 1930s and '40s, but we
> don't really know how unusual or common it would be for a member of
> the Coast Guard unit to have with him a small bottle of civilian
> hair tonic on a deployment to the South Pacific.

Lanolin could have shown up on the island for another reason, it
seems the stuff has been used for years to repel barnacles from
marine props (sigh).

http://www.boatsexplained.com/boat-maintenance/sheeps-grease-for-
props-3.html
http://www.bluewatersupplies.com/othercandlery12.htm
http://www.lanolene.com/
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 30 Dec 2007 20:47:18
From:         Dan Postellon
Subject:      Re: DNA

I'm pretty sure that Vitalis, a mens hair lotion, contained lanolin.
I seem to remember a jingle 'it's made with soothing lanolin".  Dan
Postellon
======================================================================== 
Date:         Sun, 30 Dec 2007 20:47:50
From:         Dan Postellon
Subject:      Re: Thoughts on bones

OK!  Now, is there anything chemically unique about her cosmetics?
Dan Postellon

> From Mona Kendrick
>
>> From Tom King on Ric's message VERY interesting zipper-facts!  It
>> may be timely to introduce the
>> Forum to the Eva Schiaparelli connection. Schiaparelli was a noted
>> fashion designer of the '30s (her company is
>> still in business), known for her extensive use of zippers (then a
>> very new thing).  There are reports that she was friendly with
>> Earhart, designed clothes for her, and perhaps inspired Earhart's own
>> brief foray into fashion design.  She also did cosmetics.  It would
>> be very interesting to know more about what kinds of zippers she
>> used, which could presumably be determined through intensive
>> inspection of period clothes in museums and private collections, if
>> there are no relevant archives.
>>
> Without a doubt AE preferred zippers to other kinds of fasteners
> once  they
> became available.  1934 newspaper writeups concerning Earhart's
> fashion line
> note that the skirts, blouses, jackets, hats, and jodhpurs fasten
> with zippers. LTM,
> Mona
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:20:16
From:         Pete Backlund
Subject:      Re: DNA?

Not Vitalis. Wildroot Cream Oil Hair Tonic contained lanolin and used
that jingle.  It is, or was until recently, still on the market.

> From Dan Postellon
>
> I'm pretty sure that Vitalis, a mens hair lotion, contained lanolin.
> I seem to remember a jingle 'it's made with soothing lanolin".  Dan
> Postellon
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:21:14
From:         Don Iwanski
Subject:      Re: DNA?

And just how are you going to annouce to the world that you found
Earhart's turd on Gardner Island? Gasp!

Perhaps Earhart's DNA can be matched with a known distant relative, but what if
it belongs to Fred, is there a known distance relative of Fred's
alive today which can provide a sample?
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:22:56
From:         Hue Miller
Subject:      Re: DNA?

> Lanolin could have shown up on the island for another reason, it
> seems the stuff has been used for years to repel barnacles from
> marine props (sigh).

However, clearly the marine application was of
grease consistency and was supplied a wide-
mouth jar format.
-Hue Miller
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:23:27
From:         Hue Miller
Subject:      Longer term expedition?

Here is something i have wondered about:
What "if" some workers were to stay on Niku
for longer than the expeditions have done -
say for up to maybe, 2-3 months?  This is
entirely speculative, and i can see that logistics
would be very difficult. Would this be worthwhile,
otherwise, "if" volunteers with the time, funds
to get there, lay in supplies, and so on, could
be found? Is there a danger factor also, such as
infected wounds, storm danger, and such?
-Hue Miller
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:24:41
From:         Mike Piner
Subject:      Anthropology

It seems that Tighar's  techniques are being used as a model. See

http://people.uncw.edu/albertm/ant211summer2007/historic/ae01.htm

LTM who went to  college
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:25:14
From:         Tom King
Subject:      Re: DNA?

For Randy Jacobson:  I don't think anyone's jumping to conclusions.

      (a) It may well not even be a coprolite;
      (b) If it were, it could be from a number of different sources,
including one of our own people in 2001 (though I very much doubt it).

But it's worth testing.

For William Webster-Garman:

Though I've been and continue to be cautious about suggesting a
female cosmetic origin for the bottle with the lanolin (I'm certain
there are and were lots of men's hair products with lanolin), I have
trouble imagining a glass bottle as a very efficient dispenser of
prop lubricant, and the items illustrated on one of the sites you
found all seem to be either in cans or squeeze tubes.

For Dan Postellon:

Right, we need to find out if there was anything chemically
distinctive about Schiaparelli cosmetics.  However, the compact in
the Purdue collection is apparently NOT Schiaparelli, so AE was
evidently somewhat eclectic in her tastes.  What I think would be
more promising as a line of research would be to seek out
Schiaparelli-designed women's clothes of the period and see (a) what
kinds of zippers they had, and (b) what they were made of.  Ditto
with Earhart's own designs.

LTM (who believes in multi-tasking)
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:25:40
From:         Tom King
Subject:      "Coprolite" and lanolin bottle

A little elaboration on the "coprolite" and the bottle with the lanolin:

Coprolite:

It was found next to a fire feature, which contains a lot of bird
bone and not much fish bone, no turtle bone.  Nearby was a
concentration of tridacna giant clam shells, which did NOT show
evidence of inexpert opening like the ones in the clamshell cluster
we excavated in 2001.  The feature also contained quite a lot of very
rusted ferrous metal, including the 40 cm rectangular object
mentioned in earlier notes, and two of the pieces of possible rouge.
The analyst said that the "coprolite" contained a good deal of
charcoal and an oxidized core.  My guess is that it's actually some
kind of long, skinny ferrous object that as it oxidized fixed stuff
to it that was either from an original wrapping of some kind or just
present in the environment, but I'm totally at a loss to imagine what
this might be.  The chocolate idea is interesting, but doesn't
account for the oxidized core.

Bottle:

It was found in the midst of the remains of a small steel barrel, and
what we have is the base.  It looks a lot to me like a target that
some Coastie set up on the barrel to shoot off, and succeeded.  That
doesn't necessarily mean it was a Coastie's bottle; it could have
been collected on the site, or on the beach.  Or it could have gotten
mixed up with the barrel some other way.  About the only other thing
associated with the barrel and bottle were the partial remains of a
sea turtle.

What can the Forum make of all that?

LTM (who thinks maybe it was a wooly sea turtle)
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:26:11
From:         Rick Jones
Subject:      Re: DNA?

Has Dr. Kar Burns published any additional findings from the taphonomy
experiment?  Do we know what the crabs did with the bones?  Eaten? Buried?
How deep? What radius from the site, generally?  Was anything discovered to
give us hope of finding bones from the original site?

In the Niku V CD there was a picture of a small colored glass bottle I would
like to see in more detail.  Is there another photo of the pieces which include
the logo on the bottom? Maybe other views of the remaining other pieces?
LTM
Rick J
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:26:45
From:         Ted Campbell
Subject:      Cosmetics

How is TIGHAR's relations with the Purdue AE collection people?

I noticed that they (Purdue) had a cosmetic's case that belonged to
AE.  I wonder if the contents match that of what you recently
reported finding on Niku.

Ted Campbell
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:27:07
From:         Ric Gillespie
Subject:      Re: DNA?

William Webster-Garman wrote:

> Lanolin could have shown up on the island for another reason, it
> seems the stuff has been used for years to repel barnacles from
> marine props (sigh).

The lanolin was mixed with oil and was found in the corner of the
bottom of a small (maybe 6 oz.) rather fancy bottle that was made in
Bridgeton, New Jersey in 1933.  I would be more than a bit surprised
if the bottle contained a product intended to keep barnacles off boat
props.

Ric
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:51:45
From:         William Webster-Garman
Subject:      Re: "Coprolite" and lanolin bottle

Thanks for the further detail, Tom.

About the lanolin bottle, its context does sound to me like it may
have been used in target practice by a coastie (Sopko was indeed very
worried about a visit from employees of the Japanese government and
likely encouraged this kind of thing): Maybe someone either brought
the empty bottle from trash at the LORAN station or found it
somewhere. I don't mean to draw conclusions about the bottle's
contents having been possibly smeared on a prop, only to bring it up.
Someone could have been making their own lanolin grease on that
isolated atoll. I strongly doubt it, but it's worth watching out for.

As for the "coprolite," it's interesting but I can't imagine a
castaway depositing that within the campsite (unless it was a very
ill castaway, near death). If it has an oxidized ferrous core, it's
clearly something else, like a metal rod with some kind of flammable
sheathing?

So far, the potential "rouge" sounds most promising to me!
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:52:16
From:         William Webster-Garman
Subject:      Re: DNA?

Ric wrote

> The lanolin was mixed with oil and was found in the corner of the
> bottom of a small (maybe 6 oz.) rather fancy bottle that was made
> in Bridgeton, New Jersey in 1933.  I would be more than a bit
> surprised if the bottle contained a product intended to keep
> barnacles off boat props.

Thanks for the description Ric, yep, it doesn't sound like something
intended for a boat prop (mixed with oil, "fancy" bottle" - it's hard
to be sure from a low res picture).
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:58:37
From:         Amanda Dunham
Subject:      Re: Cosmetics

It's an extreme long shot to try to match the make up contents by brand.
For the gentlemen of the forum:  women don't usually stick to one particular
brand of make up at any one time for any particular product.  (Unless you're
like me, and because of skin sensitivity, use one brand ONLY.) Different
brands carry different color ranges.  I'm guessing, of course, but I'd be
willing to bet that AE's make up drawer was full--one color for evening,
another for when she was sunburned, etc., etc., etc.  I don't know about the
1930s, but currently brands' colors change with the seasons.  And if AE was
as frugal as my grandmother, she'd find a compact she liked and when it was
empty, refill it with a different color...

Love to Mother, who says all this talk of coprolite reminds her of the old
Steve Martin routine...
Amanda Dunham, 2418CE
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:19:32
From:         Ted Campbell
Subject:      Re: DNA?

Regarding the cosmetics; let's not forget that Jacqueline Cochran-a
close friend of AE, also had a line of cosmetics during the period
(1937) and that AE spent time at Cochran' ranch just before the
around the world attempt.

Ted Campbell
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:20:12
From:         Ric Gillespie
Subject:      Re: Longer term expedition?

Hue Miller asked:

> Here is something i have wondered about:
> What "if" some workers were to stay on Niku
> for longer than the expeditions have done -
> say for up to maybe, 2-3 months?

We've considered it many times.

Niku is a dangerous place. Just a fall on the coral can result in a
serious infection and anyone living on the island has to rely on
rainfall or a water-maker for drinking water. Leaving a person, or a
small group of people, on the island would mean having a ship
constantly on stand-by in either Samoa or Fiji ready to go to the
rescue in the event of a water shortage or injury.  There simply
aren't any ships available for that and, if there were, the cost of
keeping them on stand-by would be prohibitive.  Flying boats or
helicopters?  Ditto.  The distance is too great for any helicopter
and there are no flying boats in the region.

The nature of the archaeological work actually lends itself much
better to an episodic, team approach.  We have a fairly specific site
that requires labor-intensive clearing before the archaeological work
can be done.  A team of 15 to 20 people can accomplish more in three
weeks than one or two people could do in several months.

Also, as we're seeing right now, we don't know the significance of
what we've found until we've had a chance to do the post-expedition
analytical work.  A long-term expedition team wouldn't know what they
should do next.

Ric
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:20:34
From:         Ted Campbell
Subject:      Re: DNA?

Amanda,
One value of trying to find a match of the makeup material would be
to tie down the nationality of the manufacture i.e. US or UK, etc.

Ted Campbell
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:20:57
From:         Ted Campbell
Subject:      Niku V reports

Are we going to see additional reports/analysis of the objects found
on the web site?

Seems like there was more stuff returned from Niku V than I
originally thought.  Also, there is testing/analysis going on that
would present some interesting reading, and who knows, a "I have one
of those" moments.

Ted Campbell
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:21:33
From:         Tom King
Subject:      Re: Longer expedition?

The idea of a longer stay is something we've talked about and argued
about many times; it would have many advantages, but....

<<Would this be worthwhile, otherwise>

Yes, definitely.  We spend an awful lot of time each visit just
getting started, cutting trails, getting acclimated, clearing sites,
and so on.  Then we work like the devil for far too short a time and
it's time to go home.  There's a lot we could do with more time.

<<"if" volunteers with the time, funds
to get there, lay in supplies, and so on, could
be found?>>

Well, those are the rubs.  First, most of us have day jobs, and can't
afford too much time away.  There are also family obligations, etc.
There are limits to how long Nai'a, or any likely support vessel, can
stay on station.  If we didn't have a support vessel stay -- if it
dropped a crew off and came back to collect them -- that would
present a whole new set of logistical and fiscal issues, and heighten
the risk of someone's minor injury or illness turning into something
really serious before s/he could be gotten to hospital.  Bottom line
is, it could be done, but it would be a serious challenge -- UNLESS
we had a much larger ship (ergo more time on station) and a lot more
money (both for supplies and to actually pay a crew).

<<Is there a danger factor also, such as
infected wounds, storm danger, and such?>>

Yes, but see above.

LTM (who'd like to live there, but....)
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:21:53
From:         Rick Boardman
Subject:      Re: Cosmetics

JUst to add to the mix about the lanolin an it's use, iit's in reams
of products for foot problems too, and nappy rash cream!  More
seriously, don't hard working sea-faring types use it to toughen hands?

Rick Boardman
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:22:47
From:         Mona Kendrick
Subject:      Re: "Coprolite" and lanolin bottle

> From Tom King
> The analyst said that the "coprolite" contained a good deal of
> charcoal and an oxidized core.  My guess is that it's actually some
> kind of long, skinny ferrous object that as it oxidized fixed stuff
> to it that was either from an original wrapping of some kind or just
> present in the environment, but I'm totally at a loss to imagine what
> this might be.

How about a flare?

--Mona
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:23:24
From:         Alan Caldwell
Subject:      Re: Where was Amelia at 8:43

DON, about an hour passed from the time Earhart said, "we must be on
you...." and that they were on 157/337. That tells us very little. We
don't know how long they searched or in what directions or patterns.
We don't know when they ceased to search for Howland if in fact they
did.

Here's what we do know. no one on the Itasca or on Howland reported
hearing the plane. I have to assume that would have been reported and
we would know that. We can therefore deduce the plane did not come
within hearing distance. I don't know how far that would be. I have
queried units with T-6 aircraft and have not obtained usable results.
I, myself, watched two T-6 aircraft in close formation fly over at
about 1,000 feet estimated and at 3 miles their sound was gone.

For those curious the T-6 used the same engine as the Electra.

Yesterday I flew back over Birmingham airport from which I had just
departed and could not spot the field with 3/8 scattered CU and I was
about 3,000 at the time.

I spent many years flying in the same conditions as Earhart at
Howland flying into Bermuda, the Azores, Guam and Wake. Scattered CU
cast shadows on the water that look like islands. Without radar and
other nav aids we would have had a lot of trouble finding our
destination. I see nothing unusual about Earhart and Noonan missing
Howland  and in my estimation by not very far. I say that because
they COULD have come very close and not seen the island and because I
know of no credible evidence that would have put them far off course.

Alan
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:24:20
From:         Alan Caldwell
Subject:      Re: Where was Amelia at 8:43

We have no idea where their version of 157/337 was physically over
the earth. Only if it was almost dead on running through Howland would
that track to Gardner. If that was the case they would have found
Howland -- most likely.

I don't know how they found Gardner. Possibly by luck or maybe by the
time Noonan could get a good position it was obvious they could not
get back to Howland.

To me the curious part is that no message ever told us where they
were. That leads me to one of two conclusions. Either they DID know
where they were and we never got that message or they never knew
where they were.

Alan

> From Mike Piner
>        For Alan Caldwell.
>> I personallydon't believe their NW/SE search ....
>> To me it IS reasonable they split the two Ialands and overshot.
>
>     My question would then be.  How did they find Gardner?  this LOP
> thru Howland to Mckeon or Gardner was their "Lifeboat", and they
> couldnt get too far away from the Time of sunrise position to be used
> inconjunction with the LOP.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:25:09
From:         Alan Caldwell
Subject:      Re: Where was Amelia at 8:43? (Lynch, Pellegrino)

Gary, we probably shouldn't confuse the newbies. We haven't the
slightest clue what heading Noonan was on during the entire flight
except during take off roll at Lae.

Alan

> From Gary LaPook
>
> In Pellegrino's book she described trouble spotting Howland because
> of cloud shadows. But, when she finally did find it, the problem was
> that it had been hiding behind a rain squall and so they didn't see
> it till close aboard. Her navigator was Bill Polhemus, an air force
> navigator, using a periscopic sextant and making the landfall on a
> heading of 157¡, just like Noonan.  They had turned off the LOP when
> they first encountered a rain squall and had searched around other
> rain squalls looking for the island.  However, after finally spotting
> the island that had been obscured by rain squalls, Pellegrino's wrote
> that her navigator, Bill "Polhemus thought that if we had kept going
> through that first squall encountered when nearing Howland, we
> probably would have been 'dead on' the island" Another testament to
> the accuracy of the landfall technique.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:25:51
From:         Alan Caldwell
Subject:      Re: Where was Amelia

That's exactly right, Gary. I see two points. Mike could well be
correct Noonan could have obtained a good star fix barring an
overcast of course. And we now know they DID have an overcast a
little earlier. Secondly we can see there was precious little time
for Noonan to do sun lines for an accurate ground speed. Enough I think.

Alan

> From Gary La Pook
>
> If you continue your calculations you will see that 110 miles from
> Howland, even at 8,000 feet, the sun would not have been visible on
> the aircraft at the time of sunrise at Howland.
>
> gl
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:26:34
From:         Mona Kendrick
Subject:      Re: "Coprolite" and lanolin bottle

> From Tom King
> Coprolite:
>
>> The analyst said that the "coprolite" contained a good deal of
>>
> charcoal and an oxidized core.  My guess is that it's actually some
> kind of long, skinny ferrous object that as it oxidized fixed stuff
> to it that was either from an original wrapping of some kind or just
> present in the environment, but I'm totally at a loss to imagine what
> this might be.

I did  a little browsing on Wikipedia on the subject of flares. Charcoal and
ferrous stuff (e.g., iron/potassium chlorate, and iron pellets thinly coated
with aluminum) are both mentioned as components of some kinds of flares.

--LTM,
     Mona
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:27:10
From:         Alan Caldwell
Subject:      Re: Longer term expedition

Given what you say is true I could provide you with a list of people
I would like to leave on Niku. Unfortunately they are not likely to
advance our cause.

Alan, back from Nashville
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:29:07
From:         Tom King
Subject:      Re: Coprolite or flare?

> How about a flare?

Oh, that's a VERY interesting idea.  Something to check, for sure,
assuming the DNA studies come up dry.  Thanks, Mona.

LTM (who says that's a very bright idea)
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:39:23
From:         Tom King
Subject:      Re: Niku V Reports

There was lots of stuff that came back from Niku V; the problem is
that it takes time and money to get it analyzed.  We're getting free
or cheap analyses of the possible DNA sources and the fish and turtle
bones, but that means the work has to be squeezed in by the labs and
specialists around paying jobs.  In the next week or so my
metallurgist neighbor and I are going to the Naval Academy, where he
teaches, to use their lab in looking at some of the metal we
recovered -- again a matter of when the time's available to do the
work.  Ric's running things needing chemical analysis through the
Winterthur lab as fast as possible, but that's pricey.

There are several jobs that are just going to take time and travel to
relevant archives and collections -- notably study of zippers.

LTM (who says the household chores always take longer than the
vacations)
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:51:16
From:         Mona Kendrick
Subject:      Re: Coprolite or flare?

> From Tom King
>
>> How about a flare?
>
> Oh, that's a VERY interesting idea.  Something to check, for sure,
> assuming the DNA studies come up dry.  Thanks, Mona.

The idea comes from Mother, who was having one of her flare-ups.

--Mona
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 21:58:32
From:         Dan Postellon
Subject:      Re: "Coprolite" and lanolin bottle

Any idea what oxide? iron?  It is the wrong kind of sand to melt and
fuse.  I'm at a loss.  Dan Postellon

> From Tom King A little elaboration on the "coprolite" and the
> bottle with the lanolin.... The analyst said that the "coprolite"
> contained a good deal of  charcoal and an oxidized core.
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 21:58:58
From:         Dan Postellon
Subject:      Re: Flare?

Interesting thought.  If it is a flare, it probably contains iron
oxide and aluminum powder (oxide by now).
Dan Postellon
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 21:59:38
From:         Karen Hoy
Subject:      Re: Niku V Reports

I have found a couple of Schiaparelli books in the Art Department of
New York Public Library, so I'll be looking at those on Wednesday
(hoping for close-up pictures of zippers.)

As for the Niku zipper, does it appear to be a heavy duty item (such
as might be found on trousers) or lightweight? I seem to recall that
Schiaparelli put zippers anywhere on  some garments, even as mere
decoration.

Is there anything else I can do in NYC?

LTM (who eagerly awaits the inside poop on the "coprolite!")

Karen Hoy
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 22:00:00
From:         Ron Bright
Subject:      Re: DNA?

For a look at the  "bare essentials" that AE took along, see page 116
of "Women Aloft" for a  photo of AEs powder compact which was a
"prioity accessory" on  all her flights. Looks like a 3 bty4 metal
compact with various applicators.
If she landed at Niku, it would have been , I would guess, in her
luggage etc that she would have taken to ashore.
Ron B
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 22:00:20
From:         Ron Bright
Subject:      Re: Other Necessities

I would also be looking for the following that could be linked to AE
      walking boots (soles)
      land compass
      waterproof match box
      knife and ax
      canteen
      orange kite
      tomato juice can (Beachnut)
      thermos bottle
      sun glasses
      ice pick
      emergency water light cannister (about 8")
      smelling salts bottle

Reportedly these were some of her emergency supplies she carried and
if she were making a campsite, a necessity.

LTM,
Ron B
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 22:00:48
From:         Mike Piner
Subject:      Re: Coprolite?

> From Tom King
> The analyst said that the "coprolite" contained a good deal of
> charcoal and an oxidized core.  My guess is that it's actually some
> kind of long, skinny ferrous object that as it oxidized fixed stuff
> to it that was either from an original wrapping of some kind or just
> present in the environment, but I'm totally at a loss to imagine what
> this might be.

           Dr King what about some approx dimensions?  Like length,
and diameter of the ferrous part, and where was the charcoal,
(diameter?). Flashlight?  shotgun shell?
LTM      mp
======================================================================== 
Date:         Mon, 31 Dec 2007 22:01:33
From:         Stephen Packard
Subject:      Re: Niku V Reports

May I ask what the "possible DNA sources" are?   I was not aware of
anything that might be human remains of any kind being discovered