On July 5th, 1937 several newspapers listed an item indicating that signals from the Earhart plane had been received by Ray Mahoney, a radio amateur living in Cincinnati, OH. This specific report is listed on the TIGHAR website
Post Loss Catalog as message 4xxxxMY. I've been digging around to see if I could find any reference to this person and for what it's worth this is what I found.
I searched through two different sources to see if a Ray Mahoney was licensed as a radio amateur in 1937. The first site
1930 FCC catalog of callsigns showed no licensed amateur in Cincinnati with that name as of that date. The second site
Fall 1937 Amateur Callbook was also reviewed starting at the point where the 1930 document left off. In short no licensed amateur with the name Ray Mahoney could be found. This was not a fancy database search, it was old school scanning with Mark I eyeballs through pages.
Then I wondered if any Ray Mahoney could be found in Cincinnati. Ancestry.com (a paid subscription service) listed four pages of Mahoneys living in Cincinnati in 1940. None listed a first name of Ray as head of household. With a little luck a Ray Mahoney, aged 19, was found listed as living at home with his father Charles W Mahoney at 1518 Central Parkway. The census data confirmed that the family lived at that address in 1935. This is the only Ray Mahoney I could find.
Then the newspaper accounts were reviewed using Newspapers.com. There was some variation on what they reported. All the accounts directly quote Mahoney as saying "'The signals were weak' said Mahoney, 'about all I could make out were the call letters of the plane, that apparently it had hit a reef or was near a reef'". The Sedalia (MO) Democrat indicated the Ray Mahoney heard Amelia Earhart on the radio "from a position he interpreted to be within 57 miles of Howland Island". However the Tipton (IN) Tribune offers this direct quote: "the figure 57 was repeated and also the word 'miles' and Howland Island although I couldn't make out any direction. Most of the articles end with the note that he heard the signals at ten minute intervals "throughout the day", but he is not quoted directly. This is, quite reasonably, felt to disqualify the report since such reception was impossible.
In summary no licensed amateur radio operator named Ray Mahoney could be found in contemporaneous documents. Perhaps radio "enthusiast" was a more appropriate term. One Ray Mahoney, a teenager living a home, was identified. Regarding his published comments I have one or two little lingering questions. His comment about not making out any direction: what if 57 was actually 157
degrees? We'll never know but it makes the report hold together well: a geographic reference (Howland), such and so miles, on a course 157, on a reef? The other question is, did he really hear signals throughout the day? He's not directly quoted and we can note that, when he is, the information becomes less ambiguous.