I think Betty's notebook is interesting, but contains virtually no useful data, so far. I give much more value to the Pan Am radio operators triangulating signals to the Phoenix Island vicinity. They were not amateurs, they were using professional equipment as it was intended to be used - to determine the location of aircraft flying across the Pacific, a job they had been doing for a few years by then.
I agree with John about the obvious differences between what the PAA operators heard versus what Betty heard and the reliability of each. Betty heard AE talking for an hour and forty-five minutes just by chance one afternoon from 6,000 miles away with a “special” home antenna and came up with five pages of notes on what AE reportedly said (Betty would have had more pages, but Betty said sometimes AE was talking so fast that she couldn’t get it all down). Several PAA operators at three stations in the Pacific listened all night for several nights (and sometimes during the day too) from a distance of around 1800-1950 miles from Gardner with state of the art professional equipment. Here is every comment they and their boss in Alameda made regarding the words they heard in the voice transmissions they received during that time, as culled from the
Pan Am Memos:
HONOLULU (MOKAPU POINT): "… a faint carrier is hear [sic] approximately on 3105.... Too weak to distinguish any words. Intermittent carrier on and off. No voice distinguishable.... Two long dashes, possible voice transmissions on 3105.... We unable hear any voice.... Wake Island reports been listening 3105 and 6210 all day and evening but has not hear [sic] a thing.... Midway reports been listening 3105 but unable understand voice transmissions.... Occasionally signal strength rises sufficiently to hear voice but still took [sic] weak to distinguish a single word.... Once it seemed as though it was a woman’s voice but may only have been our imagination."
MIDWAY: "… a weak wobbly signal was heard here which sounded like a phone [voice] but was too weak to identify.... A man’s voice was distinctly heard but not of sufficient modulation to be understood or identified."
WAKE: ".... At 1215 heard an intermittent fone of rather wobbly characteristics; which I at first mistook to be a self-excited signal – voice modulated with male voice altho [sic] unreadable thru QRN [static]. ... At 0948 a phone signal of good intensity and well modulated by a voice but wavering badly suddenly came on 3105….at 1223 a very unsteady voice modulated carrier was observed at 94.5 degrees … This signal started in at a carrier strength of QSA5 and at 1236, when the transmission stopped it had gradually petered out to QSA2 during the intervals when it was audible….no identification call letters were distinguished...."
ALAMEDA: ".... The signals Mr. Paulson heard were, undoubtedly, carrier signals modulated with voice although he could not understand the voice part of it. All of the above information was turned over to the Coast Guard officials at Honolulu with emphasis being made at the time that there was nothing definite in what we had heard because of no identifying signals of any nature being received."
That’s right, the several professional operators who were specifically listening with professional equipment in the Pacific for several days and nights heard between them not one single intelligible word from AE or FN, and what they did hear faded out after no more than a few moments or minutes (one signal lasted 13 minutes off and on), but Betty with her homemade antenna just casually listening one afternoon came up with 5 pages of notes on what she heard AE and FN say on a fourth harmonic from a 50 watt transmitter 6,000 miles away. That was one hell of a “special” antenna she must have had. Maybe she was using aluminum foil?
I have reviewed for this post only the PAA logs, but from my general recollection of all of the other logs (Itasca, Navy, Howland, etc), I don’t think all of the professional operators put together ever claimed to have heard more than five distinct words in total from possible Earhart or Noonan post-loss transmissions. Like I said, this is just my general recollection and I am not certain of this, but I will give a coupon good for one dollar off on a McDonald’s Chiller, your choice of flavors, to the first person who can prove otherwise, and I’ll even spot you three words: “31" (heard by Wailupe Navy station), “KHAQQ” (can’t recall who heard it), and “Earhart” (heard by Itasca). Find three more post-loss words heard by any combination of professional operators and the Chiller coupon is yours.
I am even less certain of my recollection on this next point, but I don’t think any of the professional operators ever explicitly claimed to have heard a post-loss woman’s voice (except as noted above by PAA operators who thought maybe it was a woman, but clearly weren’t very sure about this since they also say it could have been their imagination). Nauru said the post-loss voice was similar to that in flight, but didn’t mention any words said by the voice or explicitly state that it was a woman’s voice, and I don’t think it was a professional operator who was listening at the time (per Safford, p. 36). I think Itasca said something like "we hear her now," but no indication if they actually heard a woman's voice or just some faint carrier on 3105 that they assumed was coming from her. I think something similar was reported second hand from Baker. I believe the three words I mentioned above were all in a man's voice or unstated as to gender. No dollar coupons for proving me wrong on this one though as I am not very certain.
I’m not saying that the PAA operators didn’t hear anything potentially related to AE, just that they couldn’t actually discern any words or even a woman’s voice, whereas Betty heard five pages worth of conversation between AE and FN - quite a striking contrast. PAA operators did, however, all report hearing a series of discernible dashes, which I don’t think Betty mentions having heard. One might be able to quibble with my exact word count by a word or two (and win a Chiller coupon in the process), but at any rate, what 15-year-old Betty reportedly heard in Florida was drastically, strikingly, remarkably different in content and signal quality from anything reported at the time by any of the professional radio operators in the Pacific.
I want to believe,
Diego V.