Radio log questions.

[Heath Smith]

Was the belly antenna used for the 3105 and 6210 reception? It was my impression, and this may be incorrect, that her acknowledgement that she heard the Itasca (cannot get a minimum) was using the direction finder antenna. Maybe that is why she tried to get them to switch over to 6210 because she heard nothing on 3105 and she thought this had something to do with the low frequency not working well as the Sun rose? Looking at the transmission page it is interesting that they never heard her on 6210 after 7:18GMT. I thought 3105 was her night time frequency and 6210 was her day time frequency. If that is the case, why did she switch over earlier and why was nothing heard on 6210 that morning when she did switch? That seems a bit odd.

[John Ousterhout]

The receiver could be switched to either the belly antenna, or the DF loop.  The choice of antenna was independant of frequency choice.  She said she was receiving 7500 through the loop, but then adjusted the receiver to listen on 3105 or 6210.  She might have switched antenna's at the same time, and not associated the loss of reception with the antenna change. Keep in mind that this would only affect her ability to hear the Itasca, not her ability to transmit. The silence after she said she was changing to 6210 is unexplained.

[Harry Howe, Jr.]

John
"The silence after she said she was changing to 6210 is unexplained.Cheers,
JohnO"

CHANGE often has enexplained and unexpected and undesireable CONSEQUENCES.
Perhaps the result of her attempts to change frequencies was a blown fuse and/or a disconnected antenna plug in connection (both things had occurred before).  This is my guess, and they found the problem after landing at Gardner, fixed it and made the post-loss transmissions.

[Heath Smith]

"We are drifting but cannot hear you...."

What makes me skeptical of drifting being the original correct word was that Bellarts seemed like a real stickler for details and he made no mention of it. He did point out seemingly uninteresting minor details between the original log and those that were re-typed.

Also there must have been several ear witnesses that apparently never came forward to dispute this somewhat critical word to the AE story.