Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2009 08:45:39
From: Ross Devitt
Subject: Water on Niku

I've been wandering around Niku using GoogleEarth and, as I am sure several other TIGHAR members have also done, have discovered the two dams or water catchments on the island. I don't recall them being mentioned on the forum and I am curious as to whether TIGHAR expeditions have ever looked at them.

The one inland from the northern tip (Nutiran) seems to be about 125 feet by 80 feet large and looks fairly deep (maybe 5 or 6 feet). The one about 500 yards along the lagoon shore from baureke Passage then 70 yards inland from the lagoon shore in Aukairame South looks about 30 feet by 45 feet.

The area that looks like a lake in Ameriki would have to be salty because of the proximity to the lagoon, but the other two are far enough away that they mmight just contain brackish but still relatively fresh water.

Early accounts told of someone, possibly the Norwich City survivors exploring and returning with brackish but (just barely) drinkable water.

Is the Nutiran catchment a natural feature or was it dug by settlers, or was it a natural feature enlarged by settlers?

Is the water in it more or less drinkable?

Cheers,

Th' WOMBAT

=========================================================================

Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2009 09:48:55
From: Tom King
Subject: Re: Water on Niku

Wombat, can you give us the coordinates? We haven't seen any dams/catchments on the island, though there are some large babai pits on Nutiran and an area near Baureke Passage that looks like it was bulldozed, presumably by the Coast Guard. There are also the two concrete cisterns, but that's another matter.

Thanks,

Tom King

=========================================================================

Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2009 10:05:32
From: Ric Gillespie
Subject: Re: Water on Niku

Ross Devitt asked,

>I've been wandering around Niku using GoogleEarth and, as I am sure
>several other TIGHAR members have also done, have discovered the two
>dams or water catchments on the island. I don't recall them being
>mentioned on the forum and I am curious as to whether TIGHAR
>expeditions have ever looked at them.

Yes, we've looked at all of them. They're all undrinkably salty.

>The one inland from the northern tip (Nutiran) seems to be about 125
>feet by 80 feet large and looks fairly deep (maybe 5 or 6 feet).

That one is very popular with the land crabs. There's usually a few hundred hanging out around the edges. It was "discovered" during our 1999 expedition.

>The one about 500 yards along the lagoon shore from baureke Passage
>then 70 yards inland from the lagoon shore in Aukairame South looks
>about 30 feet by 45 feet.

That's about right. I checked that one out for the first time in 1991.

>The area that looks like a lake in Ameriki would have to be salty
>because of the proximity to the lagoon, but the other two are far
>enough away that they might just contain brackish but still
>relatively fresh water.

As you can see in Google Earth, there are actually two "lakes" there - one big and one much smaller just to the west. They're both tidal and have fish populations. At low tide the water in them is very shallow and if you step near to the edge the surface almost explodes as the fish try to escape.

>Early accounts told of someone, possibly the Norwich City survivors
>exploring and returning with brackish but (just barely) drinkable
>water.

I think you're thinking of the early well-digging attempts by the colonists. The Norwich City survivors drank muddy rain water that had collected in flooded crab burrows (yechhh).

>Is the Nutiran catchment a natural feature or was it dug by
>settlers, or was it a natural feature enlarged by settlers?

I think it's just a natural feature.

>Is the water in it more or less drinkable?

Undrinkable.

Even wells dug in the village using dynamite never produced water that was considered drinkable by Europeans. Drinking water on Niku was always primarily "catchment water" i.e. rain water collected in specially constructed cisterns.

There is some evidence that the castaway collected rainwater from shallow depressions in the coral along the lagoon shore near the Seven Site. In one of the "fire features" we found two broken bottles - a small green rectangular bottle about the size of a large aspirin bottle (the design was patented in the U.S. in 1933) and a brown American pre-war beer bottle. The bottoms of both bottles are severely melted although the upper portions are not, suggesting that the bottles had once stood in the fire. A length of copper wire found in the same fire feature appears to have been folded over, twisted together and fashioned into a handle, possibly for moving hot bottles. The bottles may have served as a way of collecting water from shallow puddles after rain squalls. The smaller rectangular bottle would be particularly useful for that purpose. Both bottles appear to have been used for boiling water. The Benedictine bottle reportedly found by the work party that first discovered the skull may have been used as a storage bottle for boiled water. Numerous strips of fine copper screening found at the site may have been cut from a screen door or window salvaged from the old Arundel work site on Nutiran or from the shipwreck and used by the castaway to cover water collection depressions on the lagoon shore to keep out crabs, leaves, and bird poop.

As with all archaeological sites, the artifacts, bones, and materials found at the Seven Site tell a story. Figuring out the story they tell is one of the most interesting aspects of the investigation.

Ric

=========================================================================

Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2009 12:58:17
From: William Webster-Garman
Subject: Re: Water on Niku 

Ross Devitt commented,

>Early accounts told of someone, possibly the Norwich City survivors
>exploring and returning with brackish but (just barely) drinkable
>water.

Ric answered

>I think you're thinking of the early well-digging attempts by the
>colonists. The Norwich City survivors drank muddy rain water that
>had collected in flooded crab burrows (yechhh).

I recalled reading that someone in the party did find a puddle fresh water almost straight off but this didn't last long. The transcripts of the inquiry held in 1929 say aught about crab burrows but the survivors' statements aren't far off from that.

Henry Cleveland Lott, second officer:

"I found a pool of fresh water on the morning of Saturday. By next morning was turned to salt water and undrinkable. We had the breakers from the lifeboats. The brackish water from the pool we boiled before using it. The Trongate arrived on the Tuesday morning and the Lincoln Ellsworth. At the time of the wreck it was raining hard and wind from the westward, blowing hard. It rained hard right through the following day. After that it was showery and hot."

Daniel Hamer, captain:

"The second mate and several others now went exploring the island. They returned some time later having found a small lake of fresh water. The three firemen returned with some cocoanuts . More than half of the survivors were without boots so had to remain in camp...

The dawn came with the promise of fine weather... The waterparty had returned by this time and we all had an issue. It didn't taste good to me so all water from that source was boiled before use, there being sufficient water in hand to use while the other was cooling...

The water supply at the lake was found to be evaporating rapidly in the heat of the sun so as much as possible was obtained and stored in a couple of tanks taken from the lifeboats. Our water supply I daresay would have lasted about three weeks at the present rate, longer if necessary. We were all confident that we would receive help before our supplies ran out..."

J Thomas, first officer:

"A few coconut palms were found around the NW entrance to the lagoon from which we daily gathered the nuts, but these were not of a very good standard and like everything else which grew on the island, appeared to be in a state of decay. Near the palms we found two disused galvanised roofed huts and a large water tank, all of which were in a state of collapse, but which indicated to us that the island had at one time been inhabited, most probably with a view of growing coconuts, but that this had not proved to be very profitable and had been abandoned. The whole island was covered with rats, crabs and large sea birds...

"Water was our greatest trouble, but after the prolonged rain which existed at the time of our stranding and throughout the first day and night we found quite a lot of brackish water on a guano dump to the NE of the lagoon. Although this does not sound to be very drinkable, we were all more than glad to take our ration of it after it had had a good boiling, and we experienced no ill effects. Following the first day of dry weather this pool of water was non-existent, but we had collected sufficient when the opportunity offered to have lasted us about 3 weeks should we have had no more rain."

It has always been hard and sometimes dangerous to make land on Nikumaroro. When the Trongate came, the survivors (who had to wait for some time until they could be plucked off the island) sent a message which included:

"Send us as much water as you can as we have none. We have meat but a case of milk would come in useful also matches, chlorodyne as some of us are getting diarrhoea and any old boots (on pair size tens) and any old hats and tobacco."

Source:

http://www.tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Documents/Norwich_City/NorwichCity2.html

One of the reasons the British evacuated the island in the early 1960s was, they never got by the daunting lack of fresh water. Unlike many other atolls in the Pacific, Nikumaroro doesn't have a stable fresh water lens below ground and months can go by without meaningful rainfall. Lack of fresh water is what thwarted Arundel's coconut tree project in 1893 (Arundel was rather sharp and had profitable projects on islands throughout the western and south Pacific for decades).

LTM, who keeps her umbrella handy,

=========================================================================

Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2009 18:55:52
From: Ron Bright
Subject: Earhart 29 miles from Howland?

Dave Bellarts came across a technical radio book "The Friendly Ionosphere", Signals, Noise, and Propagation" by Crawford MacKeand, Tyndar Press 2001. He dives into a radio theory and in one chapter he focuses on "The last signals from KHAQQ". The chapter is far too technical for me to understand or evaluate, but he makes a case that Earhart at 1912 GMT was 26 miles from Howland and at 2014 she was 29 miles away. He bases this on her radio equipment and the Itasca receivers. I would recommend that your experts, Brandenburg for example,review the technical aspects and conclusions. Or maybe they you are familiar with this title and author.

LTM,

Ron Bright

=========================================================================

Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2009 20:55:46
From: Ric Gillespie
Subject: Re: Earhart 29 miles from Howland?

Ron Bright writes:

>Dave Bellarts came across a technical radio book "The Friendly
>Ionosphere", Signals, Noise, and Propagation" by Crawford MacKeand,
>Tyndar Press 2001. He dives into a radio theory and in one chapter
>he focuses on "The last signals from KHAQQ". The chapter is far too
>technical for me to understand or evaluate, but he makes a case that
>Earhart at 1912 GMT was 26 miles from Howland and at 2014 she was
>29 miles away. He bases this on her radio equipment and the Itasca
>receivers. I would recommend that your experts, Brandenburg for
>example, review the technical aspects and conclusions. Or maybe they
>you are familiar with this title and author.

As explained in the most recent TIGHAR Tracks (Oct. 2008, "The 3105 Donut), computer modeling software that has become available since 2001 has revealed an anomaly in NR16020's transmission propagation pattern which changes the whole ball game about where the Electra could have been at 1912 and 2055 (the time of the last transmission heard by Itasca).

Bottom line: Mr. MacKeand was using outdated data.

Ric

=========================================================================

Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2009 20:56:39
From: Alan Caldwell
Subject: Re: Earhart 29 miles from Howland?

Ron, I used to build HF radios for Bendix. No two radios are identical in performance so it is extremely unlikely anyone could make those statements. Keep in mind neither they nor anyone else knows the strength of the signals -- only the RELATIVE strength arbitrarily assigned to the transmissions. There is no available information that could possibly lead to those conclusions.

IF we had her exact radio -- not one like it but HER radio AND we had recordings of her transmissions AND we knew the exact propagation at the time of the transmissions we might come close -- maybe within 20 to 30 miles as a total wag.

Alan74

=========================================================================

Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2009 20:58:09
From: Rick Jones
Subject: Re: Earhart 29 Miles from Howland?

Here is the link for the Tyndar press offering of MacKeand's book, and a few excerpts of the spiel.

Rick J

http://www.geocities.com/tyndar_press/index.html

"Crawford MacKeand is a retired professional electrical engineer with a lifetime interest in radio, and with amateur radio licenses WA3ZKZ and formerly G4ARR and VP8CMY. He has written an exciting book on that always fascinating aspect of radio communication --- will there be a signal from the distant station, and will it be strong enough to use or to enjoy? He takes the user right through the system from the transmitter to the final useful output of the receiver. Will it be good enough to understand, or will it be swamped in noise. How much noise will there be, where will it come from, and what can be done about it?"

"Amelia Earhart's round-the-world flight ended as her plane was lost in the Pacific Ocean in 1937. Under-ocean search is now technically possible and here's an inside track on radio range calculations that are in the data bank of a major search organization. Nauticos Inc. plans to continue the search! Did she land or did she ditch? Can her plane be recovered? Insights into this seventy year old drama of aviation"

"In 1937 Amelia Earhart was lost in her attempt to be the first woman to fly around the world, when she was almost within sight of her mid-Pacific island destination. Records still existing in government and corporate archives have enabled the reconstruction of the final desperate calls from her Lockheed Electra to the waiting U.S. Coast Guard cutter. This information is developed before you into a detailed and highly cogent argument now with Nauticos Inc., a major search organization"

=========================================================================

Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2009 09:50:03
From: Mike Piner
Subject: Re: Earhart 29 miles from Howland?

SO Nauticos Inc should Spend their money on a ring search 29 miles around Howland Island, and find the Electra in the deep water in say 6days! A piece of cake.

LTM "her favorite was chocolate Layer.

=========================================================================

Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2009 10:35:15
From: Ric Gillespie
Subject: Re: Earhart within 29 miles of Howland?

Ron Bright asks,

>Whose recent software advances make it possible to computer model
>the progation properties of AEs antenna to an "unprecented accuracy"?

The program is called "Ionospheric Communications Enhanced Profile Analysis and Circuit Prediction Program" (ICEPAC).

>This should be published for peer review and perhaps Mr. MacKeand
>would like to comment on the validity of this conclusion.

We're not talking about some obscure new theory. The first version of ICEPAC was an evolution of an earlier program called Ionospheric Communications Analysis and Prediction Program (IONCAP) developed by the U.S. Department of Commerce Institute for Telecommunication Sciences, Boulder, CO in 1997. ICEPAC is the standard for modeling high frequency radio wave propagation. If Mr. Mackeand isn't already familiar with it he's way behind the power curve. Bob Brandenburg first used ICEPAC to model the Electra's transmitting antenna for the 8th Edition of TIGHAR's Earhart Project Book back in 2001. The software at that time was version NEC4 for WIN95.

As Bob wrote to me in August of 2008:

"I undertook this bit of analysis right after EPAC (the Earhart Project Advisory Council Meeting in San Diego in April 2008), to see if I could better bound the Electra's distance from Niku at 2013Z on 2 July 1937, but I just got around to plotting these curves. The SNR calculations were done with the ICEPAC model, using the Electra dorsal antenna gain characteristics computed by the more advanced antenna model -- 4NEC2 -- that I have been using for the past few years.

"As you may recall, the SNR calculations for the 8th Edition used the older antenna model -- NEC4WIN95 -- and led to the conclusion that the Electra's estimated CPA (Closest Point of Approach) to Howland was a maximum of 80 nmi. The attached curves show that the CPA was a MINIMUM of 80 nmi. The difference is due to the fact that there was a "dimple" -- like on an apple where the stem attaches -- in the dorsal antenna gain pattern, that wasn't picked up by the old antenna model, which treated the gain pattern as a solid hemispherical dome, but which is correctly modeled by 4NEC2.

"The result is that the antenna gain on high-takeoff angle propagation paths was significantly less than the old model showed. The takeoff angle is very high at short distances -- you may remember near-vertical incidence skywave usage from your 'Nam days -- and gain in the "dimple" region is significantly reduced. The old model gave antenna gain at short distances as about the same as at long distances, and short-range variations were indistinguishable. This resulted from difficulty in calculating the electromagnetic field of a horizontal wire antenna close to ground. But 4NEC2 accurately handles horizontal wires within a fraction of an inch of ground and correctly reports the "dimple" feature."

>And you state that if the plane was closer than 80 nautical miles 
>there was less than a 10% chance Itasca could hear AE on 2105 at max
>strength. Well 10 percent remains 10 percent and chances are that
>she was heard close in. And combined with other variables known,
>including Earharts statements, that could well be enough to support
>a closer in transmission.

No. You miss the point. Here's Bob Brandenburg again.

"Amelia would not have been heard "loud and clear" at any distance given the median (50%) probability, but would have been "loud and clear" at 10% probability at distances between 80 nmi and 210 nmi. So we can say that the Electra was at least 80 nmi, and not more than 210 nmi, from Howland at 2013Z"

>And of course Experts do disagree.

Yes, and the experts who are right are more expert than the experts who are wrong.

>Will look forward to the full disclosure.

See above.

Incidentally, I passed the above information on to my friend Dave Jourdan at Nauticos thinking that it would be useful to him in re-assessing his search area. He ran the information past his radio gurus and they replied that they have been using NEC4 models of the L10E and its antenna since 2001, and that "tests, experiments, and analysis they have conducted do not lead to the same conclusions indicated by Bob Brandenburg."

Of course they don't. They reached the same conclusions Bob reached using the old NEC4 model. The whole point is that the newer 4NEC2 model yields a different and more accurate result.

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

Ric

=========================================================================

Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2009 10:48:53
From: Tom Doran
Subject: Re: Earhart 29 miles from Howland?

<<From Mike Piner:
SO Nauticos Inc should spend their money on a ring search 29 miles
around Howland Island, and find the Electra in the deep water in say 6
days!>>

I wonder what Nauticos, or any of the "crashed and sankers" think they might find. If the Electra could have been ditched without breaking up, possibly into many small pieces, what would be left after 70 years at the bottom of the ocean?

The aluminum skin probably would have become brittle and fragile. Ocean currents might have broken that up into little chunks. What were other components made of that might have survived, more or less intact? Were there any significant amounts of stainless steel aboard? What were the engines made of?

Are there any examples of an Electra being ditched and remaining more or less intact? Maybe somebody with flying experience could clarify. My guess is that unless you can put the tail on the water first, then slow down considerably, as soon as the wheels hit the water the aircraft would flip. Surely flight schools teach how to ditch an aircraft and live to tell the tale.

Tom Doran, #2796

=========================================================================

Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2009 14:16:36
From: Ron Bright
Subject: Re: Earhart within 29 miles of Howland?

Is there any way to tell from which direction AE was heard between 80-120 miles? East, west, north or south? The plane was reportedly flying on a northwest/southeast track. Or is it just the signal strength along with the analysis that can be of value in determining the radio range?

LTM,
REB

=========================================================================

Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2009 14:30:22
From: Ric Gillespie
Subject: Re: Earhart within 29 miles of Howland?

Ron Bright asked

>Is there any way to tell from which direction AE was heard between
>80-120 miles? East, west, north or south?

No, and the "donut" of area where the airplane could be during the time Itasca was receiving signals at strength 5 is from 80 to 210 (not 120) nm from Howland.

Ric

=========================================================================

Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2009 08:04:27
From: Hue Miller
Subject: Re: Earhart within 29 miles of Howland?

I would second Ron Bright's sentiment in favor of a review of the analysis. I would not necessarily contrast TIGHARs work with Nauticos'. I believe there are radio propagation consultants who do this work under contract, on a day in, day basis. TIGHAR of course needs to be careful in the application of its financial resources, and this would likely not be the best use. What i am thinking of is not just the employment of one software application but a second or verifying opinion on the end to end circuit, that is, from the plate cap of the transmitter tubes to the receiving end.

Some other thoughts on recent traffic:

The radio equipment does not vary much as it comes off the conveyer belt. There is a final test against standard specs, within a certain acceptable percentage, i believe in the area of 5% for some specs such as power output. The variability comes in, in the adjustments made to fit it in a particular aircraft, by the owner's contract people. I believe, yes, it would be worthwhile to look at the specs of existing same type equipment, at the present time. It is possible to have EVERY component up to factory-new specs, since all components including Western Electric vacuum tubes, are available in new old stock condition, and testable for quality. This of course says nothing about the numbers for the installation on this particular aircraft, but it does define the limits of what could be expected "best-case". -Hue Miller

=========================================================================

Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2009 11:15:29
From: William Webster-Garman
Subject: Re: Earhart within 29 miles of Howland?

Hue Miller wrote:

>Some other thoughts on recent traffic:
>The radio equipment does not vary much as it comes off
>the conveyer belt. There is a final test against standard specs,
>within a certain acceptable percentage, i believe in the area
>of 5% for some specs such as power output. The variability
>comes in, in the adjustments made to fit it in a particular
>aircraft, by the owner's contract people.

Hue, there are so many variables here. Many components were more or less built by hand on small assembly lines and workbenches. Each capacitor, diode, triode amplification tube, resistor and so on, was a bit unlike any another, all had notable tolerance ranges. Likewise, given the little differences in each of the windings (more often than not done by keen-eyed women with nimble fingers) and stacking/metallurgical composition of the wafer-like stators in the transformers, output voltages were within a range but slightly different for each one. Likewise with the windings and stackings of the tuners and RF transducers. Then we have all the odd little differences in the internal geometry of gear which has been bolted and soldered together by hand, which changed induction and internal RF radiation. Add all this up and no two transmitters or receivers came out of the box with the same performance specs and moreover, no amount of tuning and tweaking in the factory could ever make them that way.

Then we think about how the radios were installed in the Electra, more unknown power supply curves, groundings, antenna performance. This was amplitude modulation so even the performance characteristics of the microphone (these change with age and use) could affect propagation.

Throw in temperature, humidity and air pressure variables and even before the signal is thrown off the aircraft, never mind the atmospherics in the Howland area that day, there is no way we can know what her transmitter was putting out on those calls without at least, who knows, maybe a 50% margin for error in amplitude and as for the propagation shape, one can talk about likelihoods all day long on Sunday but forget about knowing what it truly was.

At Howland they had nothing meaningful to compare her signal with and not a clue as to the direction it was coming from. When those strong signals hit Howland she and Noonan could have been 5 miles away or even 200 (yes, she was likely closer to 5 than 200, but which way?). The donut is huge and fuzzy and no bit of cleverly written software can make up for what we don't know about her radio that day.

LTM, who never got over losing the sparkling audio clarity and frequency range of a fit crystal set, forever lost when they came up with those fancy-schmancy, dull sounding superheterodyne receivers. The only thing that ever sounded cool through those things was over modulated rock and roll and talk radio.

=========================================================================

Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2009 12:25:25
From: Ric Gillespie
Subject: Re: Earhart within 29 miles of Howland?

Bob Brandenburg has corrected an error in my explanation of the software he used to model the Electra's transmitting antenna (thank you Bob). The net result is the same. Previous calculations used by TIGHAR and Nauticos to assess where the Earhart aircraft could be at time of the last in-flight transmission heard by Itasca were done with software that was not sufficiently sophisticated to pick up a crucial game-changing anomaly in the airplane's propagation pattern.

++++++++++++++++++++

Ric,

A small correction: the model I originally used was NEC4WIN95, not NEC4. Nauticos said they used NEC4. The following is a brief recap of how 4NEC2 came to be used in the TIGHAR analysis.

The title NEC4WIN95 is a contraction meaning "Numerical Electromagnetic Code (NEC) for Windows 95". NEC4WIN95 -- commercially available from Orion Microsystems -- is a Windows 95 implementation of MININEC3, a model developed in the 70's and 80's at the Naval Ocean System Center, which ran on PCs under the old DOS operating system and did not have a graphical user interface (GUI). In order to make MININEC3 run in the small memory available in the early PCs, the developers truncated some algorithms, one consequence of which was a limitation in the accuracy of modeling horizontal wires close to ground. NEC4WIN95 added a GUI to MININEC3 and recompiled the code to run in the 32-bit Windows 95 environment, which vastly improved its performance, but did not eliminate the ground proximity limitation which at 3105 kHz was approximately the average distance of the Electra dorsal antenna from the fuselage. In other words, NEC4WIN95 was operating close to -- but not evidently beyond -- the boundary condition when modeling the Electra antenna. With the increased speed available on a modern PC, and with the GUI, NEC4WIN95 was the most practical tool for TIGHAR's purposes at the time. As it turned out, the model missed the "dimple" that was later found by 4NEC2.

NEC (1975) was based on algorithms developed in the mid-1960s, and was designed to run on mainframe computers. NEC did not have a GUI -- a technology that was far in the future at the time -- and did not support interactive modification of input parameters. Each computer run was done in batch mode -- all inputs were in punched-card format, and outputs were in numerical tables. Version 2 (NEC2, 1980) improved the ability to model wires near ground -- within a fraction of an inch at frequencies of interest in the TIGHAR analysis -- but did not handle wires partially or completely buried in ground. Version 3 (NEC3, 1983) removed that limitation. Version4 (NEC4, 1990) -- is proprietary to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and requires a paid license -- added the ability to model magnetic fields radiated from insulated wires, and wires with non-constant radius.

Since the dorsal antenna on the Electra was neither fully nor partially buried in ground, the antenna wire was not insulated, and the wire radius was constant throughout, NEC2 was a good computational fit for TIGHAR's analysis. But the lack of a GUI made it too slow and unwieldy. 4NEC2 -- which became available a few years ago -- is free, is widely used, and provides an elegant state-of-the-art GUI wrapped around NEC2, and also generates antenna radiation pattern data for input to the ICEPAC propagation modeling program. I switched to 4NEC2 when it became available because it is ideal for modeling the Electra antenna.

Bob

=========================================================================

Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2009 18:53:57
From: Gary LaPook
Subject: Re: Earhart 29 miles from Howland?

You just have to watch any of the shows on tv showing SCUBA divers diving on the many aircraft that have been on the bottom since WW2 and you will see that they are pretty good shape after all these years, only a few shorter than 1937. I just saw another show about the "Bermuda Triangle" that showed some avengers that have been on the bottom off Florida since that time and they could read the identification numbers off the sides.(No, not flight 19)

gl

>From Tom Doran
>
><<From Mike Piner:
>SO Nauticos Inc should spend their money on a ring search 29 miles
>around Howland Island, and find the Electra in the deep water in say
>6 days!>>
>
>I wonder what Nauticos, or any of the "crashed and sankers" think
>they might find. If the Electra could have been ditched without
>breaking up, possibly into many small pieces, what would be left
>after 70 years at the bottom of the ocean?

=========================================================================

Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2009 19:50:22
From: Tom King
Subject: Re: Earhart 29 miles from Howland?

Or for that matter look at the images in TIGHAR Tracks of the TBDs in Jaluit Lagoon. I have imagery of WWII planes in equally good condition on the bottom of the Mediterranean. Local conditions, of course, make all the difference.

LTM (who stays in calm environments, and is therefore well preserved)

Tom King

>From Gary LaPook
>
>You just have to watch any of the shows on tv showing SCUBA divers
>diving on the many aircraft that have been on the bottom since WW2 and
>you will see that they are pretty good shape after all these years,
>only a few shorter than 1937. I just saw another show about the
>"Bermuda Triangle" that showed some avengers that have been on the
>bottom off Florida since that time and they could read the
>identification numbers off the sides.(No, not flight 19)

=========================================================================

Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2009 11:14:52
From: Hue Miller
Subject: Re: Earhart within 29 miles of Howland?

>From William Webster-Garman
>Hue, there are so many variables here. Many components were more or
>less built by hand on small assembly lines and workbenches. Each
>capacitor, diode, triode amplification tube, resistor and so on, was a
>bit unlike any another,

I am sorry but the above argument i consider nonsensical. It does not matter whether for example a resistor was assembled by a robot or in a small workshop as long as the tolerances are met and the variability under temperature and humidity standardized. The equipment, expensive non-consumer products, were tested at the end of the production line against standards several pages long. What this means is that while

>no two transmitters or receivers came
>out of the box with the same performance specs and moreover, no amount
>of tuning and tweaking in the factory could ever make them that way.

is true, for the real world they do not all have to be perfectly identical. A 5 or 10 or even 20% change in output power or sensitivity is not going to affect intelligability of the communications, i do not think, enough to predict some message as able to get through or not.

It IS possible to recreate or refurbish the original type of equipment; the operational numbers are published with the technical drawings, so the equipment could be operational as factory-new. Also it IS possible to simulate the whole range of possible antennas via fixed electronics components (parts). So i would suggest, yes it actually would be possible to set up a mock-up situation where you vary the transmitter adjustments against several simulated antennas, and determine the worst-case maximum actual output - and output on the harmonic channels. Now whether that would be interesting enough to justify the effort and cost, that's another issue. -Hue Miller

=========================================================================

Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2009 11:46:40
From: William Webster-Garman
Subject: Re: Earhart within 29 miles of Howland

Hue Miller wrote,

>A 5 or 10 or even 20% change in output power or sensitivity is not going
>to affect intelligability of the communications, i do not think, enough to
>predict some message as able to get through or not.

Intelligibility by human ears and brains of a trembling loudspeaker is not the same topic as RF propagation. However, aside from small changes in antenna output and receiver sensitivity having lots of sway on how that loudspeaker might flutter (in a box or in headphones), this does bring up yet another experimental flaw to overcome: I can think of no way to reliably duplicate the subjective listening conditions of that morning.

LTM, who has been known to put her ear up against a speaker.

=========================================================================

Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2009 12:51:49
From: Ron Bright
Subject: Re: Earhart 29 miles from Howland?

Hue, Bob Brandenburg, and other radio guys.

Have you read MacKeand's book "The Friendly Ionsphere"., Signals , Noises and Propagation, " in which he devotes a lengthy chapter to his KHAQQ signal range coming up with the 26 and 29 miles closest approach? It would be interesting to find out how his figures and anlysis are so different from Tighars. I find it impossible to follow the complex radio analysis as a layman.

Ron Bright

=========================================================================

Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2009 13:38:35
From: Ron Bright
Subject: Brandis/Ludolf Sextant boxes

This question got lost in the traffic of late. In your discussion of the Brandis sextant [Tighar Tracks Oct 2008] you note that Noonan's Ludolf sextant box at the National Museum of Naval Aviation had been modified with "cut-outs that are not necessary for the sextant (Ludolf) it now contains." You pose the question did this box once hold a Brandis sextant, inferring that it could have been a sextant in Noonan's collection. Have you tried to fit one of the eleven Bransis sextants you have into that configuration or cutout? Or are there too many different models?

LTM,

Ron Bright

=========================================================================

Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:07:57
From: Ric Gillespie
Subject: Re: Brandis/Ludolf sextants

Ron Bright asked:

>In your discussion of the Brandis sextant [Tighar Tracks Oct 2008]
>you note that Noonan's Ludolf sextant box at the National Museum of
>Naval Aviation had been modified with "cut-outs that are not
>necessary for the sextant (Ludolf) it now contains." You pose the
>question did this box once hold a Brandis sextant, inferring that
>it could have been a sextant in Noonan's collection.
>Have you tried to fit one of the eleven Bransis sextants you have
>into that configuration or cutout? Or are there too many different
>models?

First, we do not have eleven Brandis sextants. We have found records (maker's number and Naval Observatory number) and, in most cases, photos of thirteen Brandis Navy Surveying Sextants. Through the generosity of our members we have purchased and examined three of those instruments. We have not had the opportunity to see if a Brandis Navy Surveying Sextant will fit in the Pensacola box because we haven't been to Pensacola since this all came up. It would be an interesting exercise and it's something I plan to do at the first opportunity.

Ric

=========================================================================

Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:45:50
From: Ross Devitt
Subject: Re: Water on Niku

>So it would appear that if the castaway's Benedictine bottle had been
>used for drinking water, it would possibly have been coconut water, at
>least after a time.

How much water do you get from individual nuts picked up off the ground on Niku? I am assuming:

A - TIGHAR has opened nuts on the ground during expeditions.
B - The castaway would have had problems accessing nuts on the trees.
C - The castaway would have discovered rats and crabs like nuts and taken appropriate action.

My experiments on tropical Islands with very little rainfall show a considerable variation in the amount of water available, but little difference between amounts in green (on the tree) or brown (on the ground) nuts.

I think I worked out last time I did this experiment on an island (August 2008) that one could need up to two hours and 10 nuts to get a litre (quart) of water in some cases, based on a tested time of 10 minutes to remove enough husk form a green nut that it could be opened.

Still trying to keep those castaways breathing...

Th' WOMBAT

=========================================================================

Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2009 18:07:48
From: Tom King
Subject: Re: Water on Niku

For Th' Wombat

>How much water do you get from individual nuts picked up off the
>ground on Niku?

I don't think we've ever measured; I'd guesstimate about half a liter.

>I am assuming:
>A - TIGHAR has opened nuts on the ground during expeditions.

Yes, or at least our crew members and a few of our more intrepid team members have.

>B - The castaway would have had problems accessing nuts on the trees.

Probably. There weren't many trees, they weren't necessarily very productive, and accessing them would have required climbing, except for the occasional dropped nut.

>C - The castaway would have discovered rats and crabs like nuts and
>taken appropriate action.

Like beating the rats and crabs to the nuts. I have some trouble imagining a little Polynesian rat getting into a coconut, and the stories about B. latro stripping nuts seem highly anecdotal, but yes, the crabs and rats would presumably have been competition for the castaway.

I'm not sure why you assume the Benedictine bottle would have gotten filled with coconut water, though. It could at least equally well have been filled with rainwater.

LTM (who prefers her Benedictine straight up)

=========================================================================

Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2009 12:56:16
From: Tom Doran
Subject: Re: Water on Niku

>From Ross Devitt
>
>My experiments on tropical Islands with very little rainfall show a
>considerable variation in the amount of water available, but little
>difference between amounts in green (on the tree) or brown (on the
>ground) nuts.

When I was a kid in the Florida Keys I must have collected hundreds of coconuts at various stages of development and gained a fair amount of experience in the contents of the nuts.

There was a wide variety in the amounts of liquid and flesh. For those not familiar with the development of coconuts or their anatatomy, the nut consists of a shell about the size of a grapefruit. That shell is covered by a layer of coarse fiber intially about two inches thick. The fiber has a fairly tough skin.

When coconuts fall on their own they are green, turning to yellow. Storms may knock them down prematurely, when they are green all over. At the green stage the husk is somewhat moist and tightly bound to the shell. They are heavy for their size.

The solid green nuts are immature. The contents of the all green nut consist of about 3/4 cup of moderately thick liquid and the flesh. At this stage the flesh is a slimey goo, about like a raw oyster, congealed on the inner surface of the shell.

At the yellow green stage that flesh has begun to harden and dry. The liquid becomes more clear and thin. The husk has loosened slightly, but is still tighter than you could pull off with your unassisted fingers. The amount of liquid is reduced enough so that you can hear it slosh on the inside.

The nut begins turning brown before it is completely yellow. After a couple of months it becomes more brown and is becoming more dry throughout.

By the time it is mostly brown the husk begins turning grey. Before it becomes completely grey it is starting to turn black. At this point the nut is light for its size and virtually dry inside. The husk is less tightly bound but is quite dry and the fibers are stiff enough to cut your fingers. This has taken nine to twelve months.

A group of trees will usually have a collection of nuts on the ground around it at all of these stages.

At every stage, the husk is difficult to remove without tools. It might be possible to smash it on a hard surface for an hour or so to break up and loosen the fibers but I never had the patience for that. Once the husk is removed there is a hard nut with three "eyes" at the top. You puncture two of those eyes to drain the liquid. I used an icepick or screwdriver but a sharp stick might work. The nut can be broken by smashing it against a hard object. Chunks of the white flesh can be pried off the inner surface of the shell pieces but it has a tough dry brown skin binding it to the shell. That skin is not edible.

Also, my field experiments determined that the coconut "milk" has a laxative effect, especially if you drink more than a quarter of a cup. A cup would create a serious problem, very undesireable for a castaway on a desert island.

In my view a diet of coconuts would have drawbacks. Each nut would take someone without tools a couple of hours to get into. If you opened and consumed several nuts you'd probably have diarrhea. It might be wiser to use the coconuts to kill some rats and crabs.

Tom Doran, #2796

=========================================================================

Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:19:25
From: Tom King
Subject: Re: Water on Niku

For Tom Doran and Th'Wombat

>In my view a diet of coconuts would have drawbacks. Each nut would
>take someone without tools a couple of hours to get into. If you
>opened and consumed several nuts you'd probably have diarrhea. It
>might be wiser to use the coconuts to kill some rats and crabs.

Thanks, Tom; you've given us a good summary of the life and times of the coconut, and I think you're right about the drawbacks of relying too much on coconuts for food and/or drink. This was probably not much of an issue for our castaway(s), though, because until the PISS workers started planting in '39, there just weren't a whole lot of coconuts on the island. Put this together with the difficulty of harvesting them, and there probably weren't enough available to cause the difficulties you outline. That leaves the difficulties imposed by dehydration, of course.

LTM (who's got a lovely bunch of coconuts)

=========================================================================

Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2009 13:23:02
From: Andrew McKenna
Subject: Re: Water on Niku

Of course, if you know what you are doing, and have the right tools, it takes almost no time to open a coconut.

For those who haven't seen it, there is a video on YouTube.com of Richie, one of the Fijian crew members from the Naia on our 2007 NIKU V trip, at the lagoon shore near the 7 site opening and drinking the contents of two coconuts within 30 seconds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF8fMqSiLqw

LTM ( who loves a sharp machete....)

Andrew McKenna

=========================================================================

Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2009 15:03:19
From: Ross Devitt
Subject: Re: Water on Niku

>At every stage, the husk is difficult to remove without
>tools. It might be possible to smash it on a hard surface for an hour
>or so to break up and loosen the fibers but I never had the patience
>for that.

If you read my earlier post I mentioned that with no tools other than a flat rock and fingers, and assuming no prior knowledge of coconut anatomy it took me, with injured hands and wrists, ten minutes to husk the first nut.

Once you work out the technique for stripping them it gets faster.

I believe TIGHAR has photos of one of my island "nut stripping" experiments, showing my watch at the various stages.

"If" there were enough nuts, the castaways could have collected enough water for subsistence. In the photos of Niku I have seen there are coconut palms all over the place and lots of nuts on the ground.

Who knows how many nuts were still growing wild after Arundel moved out. The things are incredibly resilient. We have them here growing on islands with no fresh water and no more rain fall than Niku in a bad year. Takes a long while to kill them and the somehow manage to bear for a long time.

We know there was a drought on Niku around that time, but we donÍt know how long it lasted.

As for the laxative effect, I haven't suffered from it, and there are islands where the only fresh water the entire population has for a good deal of the year is derived from coconuts and they don't seem to suffer from it either.

I would rather put up with the mild laxative effect of living on coconut milk, to the alternatives, i.e. constipation, dehydration or dysentry (from drinking stagnant water).

Th' WOMBAT

=========================================================================

Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 09:20:21
From: Mona Kendrick
Subject: Re: Water on Niku

>I would rather put up with the mild laxative effect of living on
>coconut milk, to the alternatives, i.e. constipation, dehydration or
>dysentry (from drinking stagnant water).
>
>Th' WOMBAT

Speaking of dysentery, and thinking of the ferrous blood residue inside the coprolite/waste item, I wonder if our castaway had a case of dysentery. Also, a nurse friend tells me that intestinal bleeding can be caused by parasites ingested through food or water or through a skin wound. Are there any tropical medicine experts here on the Forum?

LTM,

Mona

=========================================================================

Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 10:31:46
From: Dan Postellon
Subject: Re: Water on Niku

I'm a physician, but my field is endocrinology. This is actually a fairly interesting problem in island ecology. Really virulent pathogens are adapted to human hosts, and would have died out long before Amelia got to the island, due to lack of human hosts. You still have rats, which might carry leptospirosis or salmonella, but I don't think any other mammals were on the island. Did monk seals ever visit Niku? Birds could carry salmonella. Marine life might be toxic in itself, but in general, salt water fish are safe to eat raw, as marine fish parasites usually do not attack humans. Fresh water fish parasites do, but there is no fresh water on Niku.

Dan Postellon

=========================================================================

Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 13:12:55
From: Marty Moleski
Subject: Re: Water on Niku

>From Dan Postellon
>
>I'm a physician, but my field is endocrinology. This is actually a
>fairly interesting problem in island ecology. Really virulent pathogens
>are adapted to human hosts, and would have died out long before Amelia
>got to the island, due to lack of human hosts. You still have rats,
>which might carry leptospirosis or salmonella, but I don't think any
>other mammals were on the island. Did monk seals ever visit Niku?
>Birds could carry salmonella. Marine life might be toxic in itself, but in
>general, salt water fish are safe to eat raw, as marine fish parasites
>usually do not attack humans. ...

Fish poisoning was a real problem on Niku and other islands in the WPHC's purview.

From Bones II (2003):

Susan Parkinson says that the Gardner had a higher ratio of poisonous fish than other islands, especially during the hot season. When the coral breaks up, either naturally or because of military activity, a different kind of algae grows on it. The fish that feed on the algae become toxic to those who eat the fish. Deep water fish are OK, as a rule. There is no way to tell the difference between a poisonous reef fish and one that is not poisonous, except by eating the fish.

From Ron Gatty:

"The season for the red tide is November into December. The poison affects the nervous system. It is cumulative and chronic. It never leaves you and there is no cure. The poison is tasteless. There are no tests for its presence. It won't kill you, but it will make you long to die.

"The red tide affects certain kinds of fish at certain seasons. Edible worms (analids) come out during the same season. They are not poisonous to eat even though the fish are.

"The reef fish are poisonous virtually year-round in Vanuatu. But all you can do there is fish or say prayers. The culture is dominated by the Seventh Day Adventists. When he was there, RG had to hide the fact that he was drinking coffee.

"RG caught birds to eat when he was stuck on Bird Island with his crew mates. He would sit in trees until the birds came to roost, and he would always catch a few. He kept them in a cage. But the diver let them all go. His Catholic faith was not as strong as his tribal tradition that the birds were sacred."

1229226 F.44/4/6: Fishes, poisonous, in the neighborhood of the
Phoenix Islands:-- Project for investigation. 1950-1951.
1229803 WPHC 20A F.211/5/4 Registration of Deaths
5.3.60: Ten men got fish poisoning. David Smith failed
to recover from it.
1229047-50: Card files for 300-400 series.
"Fish Poisoning. Ichthyosarcotoxism" (358/6/11).

=========================================================================

Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 13:13:23
From: Mona Kendrick
Subject: Re: Water on Niku

For Dan Postellon

How about hookworms or roundworms? Could they live in the coral-rubble soil of Niku?

LTM,

Mona

=========================================================================

Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 14:15:47
From: Dan Postellon
Subject: Re: Water on Niku

I'm thinking like a doctor, and that is why I mentioned that marine life might be toxic in itself. Toxins and parasites are different classes of disease. The problem for a human parasite would be maintaining itself for the decades when there were no people on the island, difficult to do unless it also infected non-human animals, like rats or birds. Dan

=========================================================================

Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 14:15:18
From: Dan Postellon
Subject: Re: Water on Niku

They wouldn't kill you, and I doubt that the eggs would survive 20 or 30 years in any soil. I'm not sure how specific these are for humans. Dan

>From Mona Kendrick
>
>For Dan Postellon
>
>How about hookworms or roundworms? Could they live in the coral-
>rubble soil of Niku?

=========================================================================

Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 22:32:55
From: Mona Kendrick
Subject: Re: Water on Niku

>From Dan Postellon
>
>They wouldn't kill you, and I doubt that the eggs would suvive 20 or
>30 years in any soil. I'm not sure how specific these are for
>humans. Dan

Whatever was causing the intestinal bleeding wasn't necessarily the immediate cause of death. I asked about hookworms and roundworms because my reading indicates they're a common problem for humans elsewhere in the tropics, but not usually fatal, as you say. Marty, if I read I read your notes right, toxic fish aren't usually fatal either. I wonder if the castaway just got worn down to a nub by too many insults to the body -- relentless heat, dehydration, fish poisoning, nutritional deficits (plenty of protein and carbohydrates from meat and coconuts, but maybe missing some vitamins due to a lack of veggies), chronic fatigue due to sleep deprivation (it seems like it would be hard to get a decent night's sleep when you're harassed by crabs), etc.

LTM,

Mona

=========================================================================

Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 22:33:36
From: Andrew McKenna
Subject: Re: Water on Niku

The Fijian crew also efficiently husked coconuts by bashing them onto a sharp stick, which they arranged sticking up out of the ground against a stump if memory serves. They ended up with un-opened nuts suitable for transport and storage (I'm sure they enjoyed fresh coconut on the next leg of their schedule to Tonga), and had them pretty quickly stacked in quantity like cannon balls.

I think the real question is whether or not our castaway had access to coconuts, and given the drought, the end of the island the castaway was found on, and the failure of the Arundel works, it would appear that cocos were not that abundant, and certainly nothing like what we see today with the cocos gone riot over the areas of the former colony.

amck

=========================================================================

Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 22:34:19
From: Marjorie Smith
Subject: Re: Water on Niku

More than forty years ago when I was working in the (US) Trust Territory government's public information office in Saipan, I was sent down to Palau to cover a conference organized by the South Pacific Commission on poisonous fish. At the time, at least, the theory was that the phenomenon of fish being poisonous to humans was spreading westward across the Pacific. We were told that there were many species which could not be safely eaten in Hawaii but as you traveled west, there were fewer and fewer species that were dangerous. However the old folks in places like the Gilbert and Marshall island supposedly could recall when certain fish were safe to eat that were no longer edible. The conference was to share information and theories about what was causing the poison to move across the Pacific.

The conference was held in Palau because it was just about the furthest west of the SPC's area. Although the full conference never came off (the French government had promised to send a plane throughout the south seas picking up delegates at the various islands but when the time came around -- this was May 1968 -- the De Gaulle government was occupied by the student riots in the homeland and the plane never came.

Despite the fact that the full delegations never arrived, the Palauans went ahead with their lavish welcome feast for those who did come at which they served all the fish species that Palauans ate that the folks from the more easterly islands had never been able to taste. It was fun watching the folks from Hawaii and even and Marshalls try to get up the courage to sample what they considered deadly fish. (It was also the only chance I ever had to try sea crocodile meat. Guess what? It tasted like chicken!)

Anyway, this is what I remember of from forty years ago. If this is accurate, than there were far fewer poisonous fish in the waters surrounding Niku in 1937 than there would be now. Anybody else remember this theory or know what became of it?

Marjorie Smith

=========================================================================

Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2009 09:52:41
From: Marty Moleski
Subject: Re: Water on Niku

>From Mona Kendrick
>
>... Marty, if I read I read
>your notes right, toxic fish aren't usually fatal either. ...

That's my impression.

The one number we have is one death out of ten cases from that one report I came across.

I was not studying fish poisoning, of course. But the occasional comment caught my eye, especially after Susan Parkinson mentioned that it was a problem on Niku.

				Marty

=========================================================================

Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2009 12:36:02
From: William Webster-Garman
Subject: Re: Water on Niku

I read somewhere in a biology monograph a few years back that fish toxicity on Nikumaroro (for those fish which are toxic) is seasonal. The way it was worded, I carelessly thought this was maybe some kind of cyclical, internal survival mechanism. I didn't know it might be related to later pathologies having to do with the fish! Sounds like a castaway on Niku in 1937 may not have had these worries.

LTM, who asks for sundry kinds of beef, but does like tuna and salmon.

=========================================================================

Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2009 12:36:30
From: Mike Piner
Subject: Re: Water on Niku

They, AE or FN could have been infected with anything on therir last several stops before arriving on Gardner Island via Loockeed Electra. Love to Mother

=========================================================================

Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2009 10:19:13
From: Ross Devitt
Subject: Re: Water/fish on Niku

I would like to add here that we in the tropics have a similar problem with certain fish becoming toxic at certain times of the year. Here in the Whitsundays in Queensland, Australia and throughout parts of the Pacific it is called Ciguatera poisoning. In our area it is caused by small fish eating certain toxins in a particular plankton then accumulate in their bodies. Bigger fish eat these small fish and so on up the food chain. The poison is closely bound in the tissue of the various fish and hardly any is excreted, making it extremely cumulative.

Many of our larger and popular fish can poison humans and we deal with it by avoiding certain types of fish, like the Chinaman fish altogether, and by only having one meal off larger fish. In fact we have a list of fishes to avoid, but ciguatera being what it is, many ordinary fish are toxic to some extent from time to time.

The problem for humans is that you can eat a fish that has the toxin and become sick quickly or you might eat the same fish and display very little by way of symptoms. On a subsequent occasion however - as I found out to my great discomfort back in the 1980's - a very small meal can lay you up for days.

The great joy of it is that it doesn't break down in the system. As I understand it, I could eat an affected fish now after all these years and become even more sick from it.

As a precaution, we try not to eat any fish over 4kg because the bigger the fish the bigger the accumulation of toxin.

We don't eat more than one meal from the same fish because the odds are not all fish are affected.

If there are more than the usual number of dead sea birds around, don't eat fish at all for a few weeks.

It is probably a different type of poisoning from that which is being discussed here, but it will be similar. Oh, people can die from it. Cheers,

Th' WOMBAT

=========================================================================

Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2009 10:19:47
From: John Barrett
Subject: Re: Water on Niku

Let's not forget the possibility of internal injuries from the landing itself. My brother's the doctor in the family but I think it would be possible to sustain an internal injury that would leave blood in the stool but not be immediately fatal. How's the DNA testing coming? -

John

=========================================================================

Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2009 12:30:29
From: Ric Gillespie
Subject: Re: Water on Niku

John Barrett and Ted Campbell ask,

>How's the DNA testing coming?

Slow and complicated. Nothing is as simple as it seems like it should be and we need to be sure we're as thorough as possible. That's all I can say at this time.

Ric

=========================================================================

Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2009 12:30:55
From: Tom Doran
Subject: Re: Water on Niku

>From Mona Kendrick
>
>I wonder if the castaway just got worn down to a nub by too many
>insults to the body -- relentless heat, dehydration, fish poisoning,
>nutritional deficits (plenty of protein and carbohydrates from meat
>and coconuts, but maybe missing some vitamins due to a lack of
>veggies), chronic fatigue due to sleep deprivation (it seems like it
>would be hard to get a decent night's sleep when you're harassed by
>crabs), etc.

I'd expect Mona's description to be accurate, unless AE & FN had some significant injuries or diseases we don't know about.

Regarding coconuts, an adult male should have better luck opening a coconut with his bare hands than an adolescent kid or a couple of forty-something Middle Americans. That would be particularly true if the males in question were native to the South Pacific and could call on a thousand years of experience. To my knowledge AE and FN did not have the advantage of military survival training which would have taught them what they could eat, how to build shelter and a fire, and, probably, how to easily open a coconut.

Tom Doran, #2796

=========================================================================

Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:37:56
From: Tom King
Subject: Re: Fish on Niku

What Th' Wombat says is consistent with what I've always heard in Micronesia. There's what seems like a good article on ciquatera on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciguatera .

Recalling that the fishbones in the Seven Site fire features appear to represent rather unselective gathering of a broad spectrum of reef species, it seems like ciquatera poisoning, particularly on top of dehydration, exposure, and perhaps injuries, could easily have done the castaway in.

LTM (who sticks to salmon and tuna)

=========================================================================

Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 09:42:37
From: Mona Kendrick
Subject: Re: Fish on Niku

>From Tom King
>
>Recalling that the fishbones in the Seven Site fire features appear to
>represent rather unselective gathering of a broad spectrum of reef
>species, it seems like ciquatera poisoning, particularly on top of
>dehydration, exposure, and perhaps injuries, could easily have done
>the castaway in.

Oh, and let's not forget that the castaway apparently ate clams, too. Here's a link for shellfish poisoning:http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/818505-overview . Shellfish seem to uptake the same toxic microorganisms that reef fish do.

LTM,
Mona

=========================================================================

Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 10:22:45
From: Tom King
Subject: Re: Fish on Niku

That's very interesting, Mona; I hadn't thought of the shellfish as a source of poisoning. We've found three clusters of shellfish remains at the site. One comprises a hundred or so butterclams; the other two are made up of "giant" Tridacna clams (actually about hand-sized), each comprising some 15 clams. One cluster (Clambush 2, next to the burn feature that's produced a lot of birdbone and some of the rouge, and not much fishbone) is made up of clams that have apparently been opened rather gently, probably by exposure to the heat of the fire. The other (Clambush 1), not far from the large ren (Tournefortia sp.) tree that may be the one under which the bones lay, has clams that were bashed, pried, and beaten rather brutally. It's an open question as to which of the features was first. Did the castaway first try to pry the shellfish open and later learn that just putting them by the fire would do the trick, or did he or she initially do it "right" and later lose track? Or, of course, are the two features the products of two different populations?

LTM (who's clamming up)

=========================================================================

Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 12:46:29
From: Mona Kendrick
Subject: Re: Fish on Niku

>From Tom King
>
>The other (Clambush 1), not far from the large ren (Tournefortia sp.)
>tree that may be the one under which the bones lay, has clams that
>were bashed, pried, and beaten rather brutally. It's an open question
>as to which of the features was first. Did the castaway first try to
>pry the shellfish open and later learn that just putting them by the
>fire would do the trick, or did he or she initially do it "right" and
>later lose track? Or, of course, are the two features the products of
>two different populations?

If that particular ren tree, perhaps having the best shade, was the most comfortable spot in the camp area, then it would have been the preferred location for working and lounging from early in the castaway's tenure onwards. If the brutally beaten clams do represent an earlier work activity than the ones by the burn feature, then it would make sense for them to be bashed under the ren tree.

LTM,
Mona

=========================================================================

Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 13:26:20
From: Tom King
Subject: Re: Fish on Niku

>If that particular ren tree, perhaps having the best shade, was the
>most comfortable spot in the camp area,

That's questionable. It appears that in 1937 there were big Kanawa (Cordea subchordata) trees just SE of the ren tree along the ridgecrest; it may have been cutting those trees that led to discovery of the skull. Kanawa is pretty shady. But there may have been other microclimatic sorts of factors that made the ren location attractive.

=========================================================================

Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:04:17
From: Ron Bright
Subject: Niku time of arrival

Recently Tighar Tracks published the possibility that Earhart could have been as much as 210 nautical miles from Howland and if on the line southeast of Howland, the plane could arrive at Niku much earlier. Niku is roughly 380 miles south of Howland, and if she was 210 miles down that track, she was only 170 nautical miles from Gardner.

At roughly 130 nautical mph, she would have been at Niku in about an hour and fifteen minuts or about 10:00 am local.

Wouldn't this suggest that Betty , who reportedly heard AE at 4:30 pm St Pete time, was hearing AE at 10 am Niku time on 2 July rather than 5 July? The content seems more appropriate, if Earhart were on an outer reef, etc. Of fourse if she was on a northwest track, all bets are off.

LTM,
Ron

=========================================================================

Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:28:01
From: Ric Gillespie
Subject: Re: Niku time of arrival

Ron Bright writes,

>Recently Tighar Tracks published the possibility that Earhart could
>have been as much as 210 nautical miles from Howland and if on the
>line southeast of Howland, the plane could arrive at Niku much
>earlier. Niku is roughly 380 miles south of Howland, and if she was
>210 miles down that track, she was only 170 nautical miles from
>Gardner.

>At roughly 130 nautical mph, she would have been at Niku in about an
>hour and fifteen minuts or about 10:00 am local.
>
>Wouldn't this suggest that Betty , who reportedly heard AE at 4:30
>pm St Pete time, was hearing AE at 10 am Niku time on 2 July rather
>than 5 July? The content seems more appropriate, if Earhart were on
>an outer reef, etc. Of fourse if she was on a northwest track, all
>bets are off.

That's an interesting thought. We had previously rejected Friday the 2nd because it looked like 10:00 was too early for an arrival at Niku. There are also other events that happened on the 5th that seem to fit well with what Betty transcribed. However, this new information about the radio situation changes the picture. I'll need to dig back into the whole issue and see how things line up. For one thing, I do see the logic in thinking that the first thing Earhart might do after a successful landing is call for help.

Thanks for raising the question. We may make a TIGHAR out of you yet.

Ric

=========================================================================

Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 09:48:02
From: Reed Riddle
Subject: Re: Niku time of arrival

Another thing that needs to be considered is the tides at that time...if the tide was in, then they would have had to try a landing on the beach. If it was out but coming in, then the timing would fit with what Betty heard...shortly after landing, the tide starts to come in, Fred is injured after the crash, they are both exhausted after being up so long and stranded on an island (so a bit worried). It might also explain why she wasn't continually repeating their location, since they hadn't narrowed it down yet.

It might also limit where the plane had to come to rest. They had to be able to read the ship name (if NY is Norwich), which means the plane ended up close enough to it or they had to walk over and look, and then walk back to the plane. It might also explain the reaction of the Coast Guard, because if Earhart was barely down then maybe the idea of hearing her hadn't been spread yet.

So, there's reason to pursue this, and it might make the circumstantial case a bit stronger. The DNA or an Electra part is going to remain the smoking gun however.

						Reed
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:43:47
From: Pat Thrasher
Subject: New Research Bulletin

I've just put up a new research bulletin, reporting the results of the Eddy Current Analysis done on the aluminum samples from Nikumaroro. Here's the link:

http://www.tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Bulletins/57_EddyCurrentAnalysis/57_EddyCurrentAnalysis.htm

You can always navigate to it from the TIGHAR home page by clicking on the Earhart Project icon, then Bulletins, and the latest bulletin is always at the top of the list.

Pat
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:53:43
From: Hal Banks
Subject: Re: Brandis sextants

Ric said,

>We have not had the opportunity to see if a
>Brandis Navy Surveying Sextant will fit in the Pensacola box because
>we haven't been to Pensacola since this all came up. It would be an
>interesting exercise and it's something I plan to do at the first
>opportunity.

Ric, I live in Pensacola and if I can be of any help please let me know.

Hal Banks
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:42:14
From: Ric Gillespie
Subject: Re: Brandis Sextants

Hal Banks wrote

>Ric, I live in Pensacola and if I can be of any help please let me
>know.

Thanks Hal. I'll keep that in mind.
Ric
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2009 17:28:16
From: Tom Doran
Subject: Re: Fish on Niku

>From Tom King
>seems like a good article on ciquatera on Wikipedia at
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciguatera
>
>From Mona Kendrick
>Here's a link for shellfish poisoning:
>http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/818505-overview

These articles would tend to make you want to give up seafood altogether. These poisonings, however, are rare. The articles report only a few hundred cases worldwide of each type of poisoning in a century. Without some evidence of a red tide in the Phoenix Islands during 1937, I don't see much reason for concern for AE and FN.

Tom Doran, #2796
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2009 17:28:38
From: Tom Doran
Subject: Kansas info on AE

A website maintained by the Kansas Historical Society has several articles and a dozen photos of AE. Don't know whether Tighar is aware of or has any use for this info.

www.kshs.org/real_people/earhart_amelia.htm
Tom Doran, #2796