I must confess to some astonishment and disappointment at where this thread has gone since my posting (#156) two days ago. I had some other things I needed to do and hadn't looked at the forum. This morning, I looked at this thread and saw so many falsehoods, misconceptions, and ridiculous insinuations posted that I hardly know where to begin.
"Falsehoods" is a little strong IMO.
Let me start by trying once again to correct Gary's utter misconception of the whole tidal issue (which many seem to have swallowed hook, line and sinker).
Good to have the explanation - I'm not sure I can blame Gary if there is a misconception. Your very detailed reply is not so easy to follow and Gary seems to have proceeded by what we had at-hand in this place. The main question in some minds seems to have been with regard to an amendment of data of which we were not aware, and how certain presumptions changed due to that.
...The answer to the second part of Gary's question is - we don't know because we don't know exactly where the plane was parked. If the plane was washed over the reef edge at or near the location of the Bevington Object, the plane was probably parked on the reef surface roughly 15 meters north and east of there. Bob Brandenburg has calculated the reef height in that area to be +.12 meters of Point A.
IF it was parked on Gardner, thanks - understandable.
In Post #161 Gary said,
"If TIGHAR no longer considers the Brandenburg study to be accurate then there should be another research paper on the site stating that the Brandenburg paper is no longer to be considered to be accurate, and why, and providing the new, more accurate, information. I haven't been able to find such a paper on the site, have you?"
There is always tension between taking the time to do the work and finding the time to write up reports of the work. We think the former should take priority over the latter, consequently our research is typically months, and in some cases years, behind the published papers and bulletins. The Post-Loss Signals Catalog took twelve years to complete. Bob has been working for many months on a comprehensive paper on the whole issue of water levels on the reef and how they constrain what could and could not have happened. As soon as it’s finished I’ll review it and, after Bob and I have discussed any questions I have, we’ll put it up on the TIGHAR website.
Understandable that the paperwork is always a challenge. In the meantime people labor here in the forum using such data as the basis for discussions, etc. I respectfully submit that stale information might itself be considered 'misinformation' when it is used to support conclusions and arguments here, so it is hard to blame someone for issuing 'misinformation' when they are misinformed by TIGHAR's own published material, however inadvertantly.
I do appreciate your thorough explanation here, Ric, but more important than these details to me is simple clarity. There are strong assumptions given to the Electra being in a place that for days provided enough clearance from the water to run an engine so that radio transmissions could be made. Then, on the day of the Lambrecht overflight, we should realize by these data and the photo taken from that flight that the tide levels were such that an Electra parked out on the reef flat, if not suddenly over the side by then, was sufficiently obscured so as to be missed by three navy airplanes flying at around 90 knots or so, +/-. Maybe the bird had gone and left the leg, the subject of this string - and if so 'nessie' as we see her then would have been 'standing' in what, somewhere between a foot and foot and one half of water? I think that's what I get from all this (interpolating from 'meter units').
I have myself at times here advocated that the airplane would likely have been obscured by a very active surf at high tide, and I don't recall any admonishment for 'misinformation'. I now consider my position to have been 'misinformed', however it was that I labored to get to it (via my best understanding at the time of data from this site, in fact).
So I stand corrected now: an Electra airframe, if present, should have stood proud in the shallows of the reef flat; were she gone, having left a leg in the fashion we see in the Bevington photo, then Lambrecht would have had a much less noticable item in the surf - but SOMETHING evident none-the-less (a "marker of some sort"?). That seems fair because of Glickman's own dimensional analysis and the now-clarified tidal information, if I have followed it correctly.
What I find most disturbing is the ease with which Gary’s transparently misinformed attack caused some to not only doubt the entire Niku hypothesis but to question my ethics as well.
The realization that we had labored under a misconception became evident very quickly. I think it is fair to say that TIGHAR depends on publicity as to her presumptions - and many of us fans who have advocated many of TIGHAR's ideas are dependent on integrity in these things. When we discover that data underlying some of our assertions has become outdated but not replaced here then it causes some of us to question our own actions. As I've said - I have often advocated TIGHAR's ideas - and now it is evident that even when my positions were questionable now because of a change in assumptions, no one took me to task for 'misinformation'.
I am not driving at your ethics in a personal manner so don't take offense; I do intend to hold TIGHAR to a high-level of ethics and visibility: promises were made in public to our youth about 'doing this right' (March 20, 2012 - Washington D.C., U.S. State Department) and I never want that lesson to be become 'kids, be careful who you send your money to', that's all. Transparency here is vital.
So I hope you don't take any of this as a personal attack - that is not intended. I have empathy for the struggle of updating data and keeping it posted, but will submit that such a thing is a vital requirement for an organization that depends so heavily on the public presentation of very detailed assumptions regarding the construction of her hypotheses.
I paid, for instance, to attend a fine presentation / symposium in D.C. in June, enjoyed meeting you and appreciated so much the hard work done by TIGHAR. My belief from that experience and continuing expectaton is always is that what TIGHAR puts before us is the best, up-to-date information they have, and that it is done as clearly as possible for a wide audience - which TIGHAR seems to seek. So I continue to hold that my point is vital to our credibility.
Perhaps there is something that might be done by some of us by way of assisting you and other staff with data updating, etc. I'm not smart enough to do what Brandenburg does, for example, but I might be able to take on a data drafting task occasionally if it would help. Just thoughts, and thanks for your explanation here.