..they flew over the equator, where the Sun's energy heats up the Earth the most, and their plane caught fire and exploded.
Wait a minute! I don't think we've ever considered that possibility.
How'd you miss that one, Ric???
Cool, Gus. Lately I've favored 'aliens'... hey, who knows???
Seriously, I think it was the seventh grade for me - around 12 years of age. I recall a question from a classmate about ADF driving me to the local libarary (the 'internet' of my day) where our beloved librarian steered me to what I believe to have been Fred Goerner's book "The Search for Amelia Earhart" (specific memories have faded, but that is the likely candidate). She made the connection from "ADF" to "Earhart" through personal recall that the lady pilot had been lost due to some sort of "navigation error that involved radio directin finding"; the book was fairly fresh at the time and she got me to it instantly through her own recall. She thought that it might be a good start for my interest.
It was a great start - not so much for radio navigation understanding as for sparking this lad's interest in the lost aviatrix, someone he'd actually not known the fate of before that day. I'd also never heard the term 'aviatrix' then, until I got home and asked my mother about Earhart. She shared a great deal more from her own living memories.
I recall realizing that Earhart had made quite an impression on those ladies as someone with a bold spirit who showed the world something about women's abilities. I recall leafing through that book and feeling haunted at the loss - that somehow she deserved to be found and the answers known. That would have been around 1970 - a mere 33 years after Earhart was lost. Hard to believe it has now been 77 years since the disappearance.
Looking back, I'm grateful for the sharing of real news from my mother's and the local librarian's own early lives - there's a taste of Betty Klenck Brown's experience in that line of thought, I suppose. Each of those ladies would have been around mid-to-late forties in years when I was introduced to that book; both are gone now. As for me, I've never been able to rest easy with the notion of that Lockheed lying out there somewhere, not found. That thought has kept me afire all these years.
Now as you say, this is a thrilling time. I hope beyond hope that we have an answer emerging - it couldn't get better than that for me. If anyone can answer it in my lifetime I will be very glad. I don't think anyone is trying harder or putting more hard-nosed analysis into the solution than TIGHAR is. Glad to be a part of that like you.
Equator, sun... who knows??? Who'd of thought that!