Greetings TIGHAR friends and staff,
I've spent about twenty hours on your site and my wife and I just ordered the book, Finding Amelia. It sounds like from the description of the book it will cover what I've been most curious about, the potential validity of any of the post-loss radio transmissions. As we know, mulit-million dollar projects have been launched to locate the missing plane on the ocean floor, yet if any of the post-loss radio transmissions could be validated, wouldn't it dramatically alter all but TIGHR's loss hypothesis and consequent search plans?
Having a technical background and wondering about this, the thoughts about the post-loss radio transmissions that come to mind include first that there appears to have been some clearly acknowledged hoax transmissions. I wonder how much is understood about where would they might have come from? Consider, in 1937 wouldn't radio gear required to make such transmissions been rather exotic and not typically available? Further, wouldn't basic necessities like the electricity to power such radio equipment been even more rare? Next, wouldn't the installation and maintenance of such radio equipment have required more than a casual understanding of high-power RF electronics. If the answers to those questions are true, wouldn't a person having expertise and access to such radio equipment been more likely to have been a responsible person that would potentially be operating in some official service and in fear of losing a license of similar? I'd guess some of the hoax transmissions could have come from passing ships, but wouldn't the crew of a passing ship have better things to attend to?
Regarding the broadcasting of hoax messages, how many people in the general population, before the advent of satellite and day-of-event reporting would have even known the AE plane was missing - when and where? Who would have known what to include to make an authentic sounding broadcast? Who knew FN was on the plane? Who would have known what frequency to broadcast on? Backing up a bit, on another angle regarding the radio transmissions, I've read elsewhere that there appears to be a big question mark regarding why AE and FN stopped broadcasting while clearly still in flight. Wouldn't a flier who was anticipating a crash landing keep talking almost endlessly trying to get the word out about where they were and what was happening?
After the hoax messages have been identified, moving into the area of potentially valid messages how many potentially valid messages do there appear to have been? What characteristics would be represented in potentially valid broadcasts? Weren't there factors about AE's equipment and transmissions that a potential hoaxer wouldn't have known, such as the keying system of her mic, potential background noise, proficiency with Morse code, broadcast situation, etcetera? How about the several stations that appeared to get an accurate compass indication from the broadcasts? How much work has gone into validation of their claims? I understand that post-loss broadcast messages appear to have been heard for about four nights after the loss, and I also understand that work has gone into theories about the plane being on a reef and only accessible at night when the tide was verified to be low. What other creative energy could be applied to understanding more about the post-loss radio transmissions?
I guess in plain terms, the potential validity of post-loss radio transmissions is to me the biggest factory in understanding what might have happened. I could almost see detailed studies devoted exclusively the the post-loss transmissions being worthwhile. Were any of them be found to be, one might say "beyond a reasonable doubt authentic", that to me would be a tremendous step forward, a breakthrough. Perhaps that has already occurred, we're looking forward to the new book.
Thanks again guys for all the work, your insights always eagerly awaited,
Alan