I keep seeing comments alluding to the idea that if the post-loss radio messages were from Amelia on Gardner, why didn't she give her position? I believe she did every time she keyed the mic. The first report we get is on July 2 at about 9:00 pm Gardner time. If you look at report #30800LE, Mrs. Mabel Larremore reported “On the first night of Amelia Earhart’s disappearance I heard her SOS loud and clear, not on the frequency but on the one President Roosevelt said she might use. Her message stated the plane was down on an uncharted island. Small, uninhabited. The plane was partially on land, part in water. She gave the latitude and longitude of her location. I listened to her for 30-45 minutes.… I heard her message around 2 A.M. daylight saving time from my home in Amarillo, Texas. She stated that her navigator Fred Noonan was seriously injured. Needed help immediately. She also had some injuries but not as serious as Mr. Noonan.” Now I know that Mrs. Larremore didn't come forward until 1990, but as you can see from the link, "Nauru (Identifier #s 30831NA and 30843NA) and Itasca (Identifier 30843IA) reported credible voice transmissions during the time Mabel claimed to have heard Earhart. In 1990, that information had not yet been compiled, let alone published", and as you can see, the report has been deemed "credible". Another example is the report by Dana Randolph #41500RH in which he states he heard Amelia at around 4:00 am Gardner time on July 4th, giving her location before it faded out. What I find interesting is that "This sequence was repeated an unknown number of times during a 25 minute period." Thelma Lovelace #71230LC reported " While tuning around a frequency where she usually heard a program of Japanese music every morning, she heard a voice, loud and clear, saying “Can you read me? Can you read me? This is Amelia Earhart. This is Amelia Earhart. Please come in.” Earhart then give her latitude and longitude, which Thelma wrote in a book, and continued: “we have taken in water, my navigator is badly hurt; (repeat) we are in need of medical care and must have help; we can’t hold on much longer.” Even Betty Klenck said she heard a series of numbers.
I have a feeling that if it was Amelia Betty heard, she heard latitude and longitude, she just didn't write it down, or misunderstood it. I find it hard to believe that someone with the experience of Amelia and Fred Noonan would have just picked up the radio mic and just start babbling useless information.
Brad
First, for the record, I do not believe even one of the post 2013 Z radio messages originated from Earhart. Nor do I believe that the vast majority of them were hoaxes, they were just the normal background of signals that were occurring every day but that no one took notice of prior to the search for Earhart, nor after.
The point I was making with the experiment is that the messages claimed to have come from Earhart internally are not the type of messages a person in distress would be transmitting and this is obvious to even untrained people off the street. This is a sufficient reason to reject all of them without even getting into the radio propagation issues (and there are many of those that I will get to later.) The experiment also showed that the same untrained people off the street would appreciate the critical importance of the location information if they happened to hear an emergency radio signal. You pointed to three reported receptions by people who claimed that they heard latitude and longitude, so where are those notes? "Oh, I wrote it on the back of my homework paper and the dog ate the homework." Since the importance of location information is obvious to everyone, as shown by my experiment, why didn't Thelma and Mayble turn their notes over the the authorities at the time? Why did they let such historically important documents get eaten by the dog?
From the the data base: "The woman then began to give her location, but the signal faded out before it was given. This sequence was repeated an unknown number of times during a 25 minute period." This was reported by Dana. So the signal, at the point that the location information was being given, just happened to fade out and it just happened to fade out at that same point many times in the 25 minute period. Right, excuse my skepticism.
Now we get to Mable. She claimed "Her message stated the plane was down on an uncharted island. Small, uninhabited." Gardner, hardly uncharted since the reason that TIGHAR believes that they proceeded so far south along the LOP was that Earhart and Noonan were heading for the Phoenix islands because they thought they had a better chance of spotting one of those islands than continuing to search for Howland. Obviously for this to be true Earhart and Noonan had to know about the Phoenix islands, they had to be on Earhart's and Noonan's charts. And most of you guys are on record as agreeing with this theory:
As Jeff Nevil said: LOP is another matter. Once established and attained it makes sense that FN would have had AE fly along the line NNW (337) first, then not finding landfall after reasonable time (fuel burned) turn to SSE (157) until landfall SOMEWHERE. If not found at Howland or Baker, then Gardner happens to be next best candidate. The logic is the lay of the land, literally: there were no reachable lands NNW of Howland, so exhausting reasonable time in that direction one turns 180 to the known lands SSE of Howland and Baker. The NNW excursion would have to be limited by time lest one lose the opportunity to gain landfall to SSE. It fits.
https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,452.msg5631.html#msg5631As Harry Howe said: again not spotting Howland, so they continued SSE in accordance with their Alternate Pplan B, i.e. fly to Gardner.
https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,452.msg5636.html#msg5636As Ric said: The only thing that makes sense is to go northwest as far as you dare first, then turn around and head southeast and just keep going. ...But you do know that all of the other islands are southeast of Howland so you had better just keep going SE, hoping to find Howland but knowing that even if you're headed away from Howland you're headed toward land.
https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,452.msg5540.html#msg5540And: 10. Noonan knows that all of the other islands on or near the LOP are southeast of Howland.
https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,452.msg5522.html#msg5522As Irving said: Noonan has a chart showing the Phoenix island group and knows if he heads south on the LOP then he will "likely" find an island.
https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,452.msg5478.html#msg5478gl