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Author Topic: visual counterfeit , navigation and subsequent demise  (Read 168091 times)

richie conroy

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Re: visual counterfeit , navigation and subsequent demise
« Reply #60 on: September 25, 2013, 05:14:07 PM »

So Think twice comment Once
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Tim Mellon

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Re: visual counterfeit , navigation and subsequent demise
« Reply #61 on: September 25, 2013, 06:24:13 PM »

IMHO, Jeff Neville has shined an important light on the level of integrity in the analyses presented on this Forum.

I don't know who is right, and it really doesn't matter one IOTA. The question is whether ideas and theories can be presented in open debate, without fear of ridicule, without fear of banishment, without fear of offending the powers.

My own experience will not weigh in here, as I have been accorded the most polite and reasoned toleration in spite of presenting controversial and irrepressible opinions.

But I fear that this Forum will not survive much longer if the vitriol is not voluntarily curbed. There are no "TIGHAR-haters" in this world, here or on other venues. There are many, however, that despair at the rancor and lack of toleration they encounter here. We understand that people are under pressure. But now is the time for equanimity and poise. Let us all keep our focus on the real goal, finding the truth about the demise of Amelia Earhart.
Tim
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Andrew M McKenna

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Re: visual counterfeit , navigation and subsequent demise
« Reply #62 on: September 25, 2013, 08:46:50 PM »

But now is the time for equanimity and poise. Let us all keep our focus on the real goal, finding the truth about the demise of Amelia Earhart.

Tim

You are joking, right? 

How do you expect the organization to stay focused when you have filed a million dollar lawsuit against the organization and it's Executive Director accusing Fraud and Racketeering? 

I thought your lawsuit is based upon the "fact" that the mystery had been solved in 2010 only TIGHAR withheld that from you, now you tell us the truth has yet to be determined?  Which is it?

I mean, really?!? 

If you had "equanimity and poise" you would realize that your suit is totally self contradictory not to mention baseless, and drop it in favor of supporting the next trip out there to really see what the anomaly is.

You have the opportunity to choose being the hero or the goat in this affair.  Any way you cut it, the lawsuit leaves you being the goat. No way around it, win or loose, you will still be the ogre in the crowd.  If you can get past your personal peeves and the lawsuit, and help us complete the definitive discovery, hero status awaits.  Your choice, which will it be?

in the mean time, please don't try to teach us about equanimity and poise.  Your actions betray your words.

Andrew
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: visual counterfeit , navigation and subsequent demise
« Reply #63 on: September 25, 2013, 08:59:14 PM »

Andrew ol' buddy, be of good cheer.  Justice is prevailing.  I'll have much more to say about the impact of today's court ruling after I've cleared my comments with the board of directors and the legal eagles.
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Andrew M McKenna

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Re: visual counterfeit , navigation and subsequent demise
« Reply #64 on: September 25, 2013, 09:21:06 PM »

Ric

I read the good news after writing my reply to Tim, but nonetheless at least part of the suit remains in place, as does Tim's duplicity. 

I look forward to hearing more, and I'm glad that it would now appear near impossible for Tim to win his case, but it still remains a distraction from the real goal, one he professes to want to pursue, yet continues to impede by his own actions.

Andrew
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: visual counterfeit , navigation and subsequent demise
« Reply #65 on: September 25, 2013, 09:32:42 PM »

Whoops I THINK the point is that discussion is the substance of a forum.

That's where you're wrong Chris, at least with respect to this forum.  The primary purpose of this forum, as I've said before, is to be a research tool for TIGHAR's testing of the Nikumaroro Hypothesis. Its secondary purpose is to educate.  We have gotten where we are by adhering to rigorous standards of historical investigation that are - it is all too apparent - not understood or not accepted by many. We know how to do this.  Our track record speaks for itself.   I try to correct errors of fact and point out invalid methodologies.  Posters who persist in arguing for unsound reasoning or unwarranted conclusions are shown the door.  They, of course, whine about how TIGHAR is only looking for agreement but we're not asking for agreement and we're not asking for endless discussion that goes nowhere.  We're asking for help. 
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Adam Marsland

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Re: visual counterfeit , navigation and subsequent demise
« Reply #66 on: September 25, 2013, 09:49:56 PM »

Just from the standpoint of someone who reads the give and take, and only occasionally weighs in, I don't mind when someone comes on and starts poking holes here and there and raising new questions.  I think it can lead interesting places.  What does get useless, and I get frustrated with it, is when people take an adversarial point of view just because, in their view, an adversarial point of view is useful for its own sake in "kicking the tires" so to speak.  Jeff, you made an interesting analogy about that being the method of a legal inquiry and I like the way you put it.  But this is not a forum of law, but of exchanging ideas, there are people, and boy do a lot of them inhabit message boards, who simply like to play gadfly.  They believe in skepticism for skepticism's sake and think it has, on its own, evidentiary weight.  I come here for intellectual stimulation.  If I wanted to, I could sit here and poke holes in the TIGHAR theory all day...because any unproven theory has, by definition, holes in it.  But unless I can come up with a MORE plausible theory on my own, I'm not really contributing anything.  I'm just saying "hey, look how smart I am."  This is something that is lost on a lot of naysayers.

I've gotten tired of a few people on here, LaPook -- while seemingly a nice enough fellow, and very sorry about the poor guy losing his wife -- being one of them, because it was clear, at least from my admittedly biased perspective, that they had their own conclusions that they were reasoning OUTWARD from, picking up evidence along the way to support the predetermined conclusion and rejecting pieces that don't fit, rather than inducing conclusions from all the available facts and hypothesizing therefrom, which is what TIGHAR has always done and why I support and follow their work.  There are a lot of people who think the former method is just as logical or as valid as the latter, but it isn't. 

So yeah, while you can make a freedom of speech argument about Ric banning this or that person, from the standpoint of someone who likes kicking around ideas that arise from provisionally accepting the TIGHAR hypothesis, it sure became much less tiresome because there wasn't somebody dragging the conversation in another direction all the time, and in nearly every case that person was functioning on some flawed understanding of the information, a bad data point, etc. ad nauseum.  And then someone has to set them straight on this, and it just would go down the rabbit hole.  You can make the "groupthink" argument all you want, and there is some validity to that, but OTOH, if you're trying to kick around a particular idea you don't need a constant stream of people who are absolutely insistent that the idea is bogus and will pick on any isolated data point to back up that position.  It disrupts any reasoned discussion of the theory and instead channels it into constant defense mode, which only occasionally leads to new ideas and wastes a lot of time.

For the record, Jeff, I haven't been bothered by the tone or substance of your posts, but I do understand how Ric could get impatient -- much of this is likely ground he's gone over, and over, and over again.  Having said all that, I never thought AE landing that far south of Howland was that big of a whomp either way.  She still had fuel to get to Gardner under most scenarios you can throw up there.  I've always felt, on an instinctive level, that the donut hole/200 nm south scenario didn't quite feel right -- but that's a gut reaction with zero evidence to back it up and I'm a lot more interested, frankly, in Ric's and the gang's opinion than my own.  If there's a flaw in the scenario, I imagine it'll surface in due time.  It has up 'til this point.
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JNev

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Re: visual counterfeit , navigation and subsequent demise
« Reply #67 on: September 27, 2013, 06:26:45 PM »

Just from the standpoint of someone who reads the give and take, and only occasionally weighs in, I don't mind when someone comes on and starts poking holes here and there and raising new questions.  I think it can lead interesting places.  What does get useless, and I get frustrated with it, is when people take an adversarial point of view just because, in their view, an adversarial point of view is useful for its own sake in "kicking the tires" so to speak.

I have not taken an adversarial point of view, Adam.  I merely see additional questions - and if they happen to challenge standing assumptions, so be it.  You are of course welcome to 'poke holes' in my analysis all you will, that might lead to interesting places as well. 

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Jeff, you made an interesting analogy about that being the method of a legal inquiry and I like the way you put it.  But this is not a forum of law, but of exchanging ideas, there are people, and boy do a lot of them inhabit message boards, who simply like to play gadfly.  They believe in skepticism for skepticism's sake and think it has, on its own, evidentiary weight. 

I am not an attorney, but I fail to see the problem with using critical thought to analyze a position or to test a hypothesis.  I certainly don't believe I'm a gadfly, but YMMV.  I am not a participant in any other forum, nor do I believe in skepticism for skepticism's sake; I believe in healthy objectivity and a consideration of all information that may have a bearing on a hypothesis and presumptions therein.

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I come here for intellectual stimulation.  If I wanted to, I could sit here and poke holes in the TIGHAR theory all day...because any unproven theory has, by definition, holes in it.  But unless I can come up with a MORE plausible theory on my own, I'm not really contributing anything.  I'm just saying "hey, look how smart I am."  This is something that is lost on a lot of naysayers.

Good - then if you like intellectual stimulation you should enjoy the challenge.  If you think you can poke a hole in a challenging way, I'm sure it would be welcome and responded to - if TIGHAR has the superior position by an objective standard then the hypothesis is merely stronger for having been challenged.

I did not offer an alternate theory that I believe is more plausible; I merely illustrated that there can be another way of viewing the presumption of an arrival on the LOP some 230 NM south of Howland Island, and why Earhart and Noonan should have been able to realize that if it was the case: a celestial shot of the moon and a reduction to a position of N vs. S, relative to Howland - and for that matter, Gardner. 

Why is 'another way of viewing the presumption of an arrival on the LOP some 230 NM south of Howland' of possible import?  Because it is problematic in a way I had not realized before, and I don't believe it has really been adequately answered.  Perhaps you can be stimulated intellectually to find where TIGHAR has addressed that, as Ric implied, or if not, address it yourself and satisfy the assumption as reasonable and likely.

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I've gotten tired of a few people on here, LaPook -- while seemingly a nice enough fellow, and very sorry about the poor guy losing his wife -- being one of them, because it was clear, at least from my admittedly biased perspective, that they had their own conclusions that they were reasoning OUTWARD from, picking up evidence along the way to support the predetermined conclusion and rejecting pieces that don't fit, rather than inducing conclusions from all the available facts and hypothesizing therefrom, which is what TIGHAR has always done and why I support and follow their work.  There are a lot of people who think the former method is just as logical or as valid as the latter, but it isn't. 

Gary is not posting here, nor am I ghosting for Gary.  I do keep in touch with Gary, and he is one of the people who have helped me get a better grasp on celestial and dead reckoning navigation.  Gary has been a professional pilot and a CFII and has around 6000 hours of flight experience.  He's flown some hairy and long over-water flights to ferry airplanes, so he has direct experience over the sea.  He can be a pain in the ass when he's heart-set on making a point, too.  Perhaps that was your main observation.

Some might accuse TIGHAR of "reasoning OUTWARD from, picking up evidence along the way to support the predetermined conclusion and rejecting pieces that don't fit, rather than inducing conclusions from all the available facts and hypothesizing therefrom" - I don't believe I have done so.  I never said TIGHAR 'rejected' anything about the moon shot or DR errors, for instance - I just don't see for now that these things have been fully addressed, as I now understand them - and TIGHAR's LOP-fall 230 NM south of Howland (somehow I'd missed that point before and picked up on it in a recent post by Ric, which got me wondering a bit).

The DR and moon shot questions seem fair and valid to me, that's all.  If there are other valid answers or things I've missed, fine - maybe you can be stimulated and help with a better answer.

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So yeah, while you can make a freedom of speech argument about Ric banning this or that person, from the standpoint of someone who likes kicking around ideas that arise from provisionally accepting the TIGHAR hypothesis, it sure became much less tiresome because there wasn't somebody dragging the conversation in another direction all the time, and in nearly every case that person was functioning on some flawed understanding of the information, a bad data point, etc. ad nauseum.  And then someone has to set them straight on this, and it just would go down the rabbit hole.  You can make the "groupthink" argument all you want, and there is some validity to that, but OTOH, if you're trying to kick around a particular idea you don't need a constant stream of people who are absolutely insistent that the idea is bogus and will pick on any isolated data point to back up that position.  It disrupts any reasoned discussion of the theory and instead channels it into constant defense mode, which only occasionally leads to new ideas and wastes a lot of time.

Not sure I followed all of that, but I'm not making any 'freedom of speech' arguments here - this is a moderated forum which we've been clearly advised is for certain purposes and is intended to have a certain focus.  If I want to exercise free speech I'll go to the courthouse square and pass out flyers...

Gary has not been 'banned' by Ric; he simply gave up posting here for his own reasons. 

I am not making a 'groupthink' argument, either - I don't believe in herding cats to market, nor cattle to reason.

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For the record, Jeff, I haven't been bothered by the tone or substance of your posts,...

I'm glad, the tone and substance are not meant to be bothersome.

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...but I do understand how Ric could get impatient -- much of this is likely ground he's gone over, and over, and over again.

I'm sure it is and I have not complained about Ric's 'impatience', if he has been.  I did note that I appreciate that this is not a great time for Ric, I realize he has his hands quite full.  But when something is written in this place that piques my interest and causes me to dig into the subject for more information and I find that there may be a question, that is when I will write on the subject. 

If Ric thinks my point is pointless or stupid and a waste of time because he's rejected if before, that's fine - but it would help if I could understand where that happened.  I've read his book, and paid into the 'Literary Guild II' in the confidence that his next one would also be good and look forward to it.  But if this point has been adequately addressed there or elsewhere I've not found it, or can't remember it well enough to find it now.  Until then I don't understand fully the point of his own assertion of arrival on the LOP some 230 NM south of Howland, that's all.

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Having said all that, I never thought AE landing that far south of Howland was that big of a whomp either way.  She still had fuel to get to Gardner under most scenarios you can throw up there.  I've always felt, on an instinctive level, that the donut hole/200 nm south scenario didn't quite feel right -- but that's a gut reaction with zero evidence to back it up and I'm a lot more interested, frankly, in Ric's and the gang's opinion than my own.  If there's a flaw in the scenario, I imagine it'll surface in due time.  It has up 'til this point.

Flaws don't surface unless we explore and question; I'm not saying there is a flaw, I have merely raised a question about an assumption because of a new understanding of a navigational foundation in the argument, that's all.  I have great admiration for the work that 'Ric's and the gang's' efforts have produced.  Like you, I have some gut reservations - I have to realize that no matter how hard they work at it, we are still looking at very circumstantial and at time ambiguous information, not hard fact.  I think that's OK - if is all part of a 'hypothesis' - and hypotheses are for testing.

Ric himself said on March 20, 2012 before the world that 'some very smart people think we're right, and some very smart people don't think we're right' (paraphrased - apologies to Ric for not having direct quote at-hand).  To me, that was Ric at his best - putting the academic argument up and making the point that we are 'testing a hypothesis'.  Obviously there is confidence in it or we would not be here. 

But we have to be realistic - we remain in a circumstantial, somewhat ambiguous state of 'proof' so far, at least as far as some are concerned.  I have not said "TIGHAR is wrong"; I've merely challenged a particular point in the hypothesis due to a better understanding of the underlying problem. 

Enough - too much, didn't mean to write so long...

Good evening.
- Jeff Neville

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Adam Marsland

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Re: visual counterfeit , navigation and subsequent demise
« Reply #68 on: September 29, 2013, 05:25:28 PM »

Hi Jeff...thanks, appreciate the post.  There's a slight misunderstanding which probably engendered the long response.  I may not have been very clear in that the thrust of my post was not directed at you personally (or at least, not the substance of what you were saying).  I agree that, in my opinion at least, you haven't crossed the line to being a "gadfly for gadfly's sake."  I was more talking about people who had come before, and who over time got banned from the forum, which was a topic that if I'm not mistaken you (and I think one or two others) had broached a few times in passing while making your core statement.  So I can understand why you would feel the need to defend against that, but I don't think you need to.  Some others, however, at least from my perspective, definitely wore out their welcome.  Again, simply speaking from my own perspective/opinion, and I'm basically nobody.  :)
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John B. Shattuck

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Re: visual counterfeit , navigation and subsequent demise
« Reply #69 on: September 30, 2013, 09:53:09 AM »

Jeff, et al;

I think it's important and relevant to our analysis of the Tighar hypothesis to realize that some questions are destined to never be truly answered.  Come the day when the conclusive piece of evidence is found to place our intrepid pair on Niku, how they ended up there cannot be known with entire certainty.  Whatever navigational decisions, errors, assumptions, readings, sightings, and the like that were made or failed to be made, even what charts were used, are forever lost with the crew.  I'll let others speak for themselves, but I believe this is the source of some of the frustration on the forum with long debates over what did or did not happen with regards to navigation.  Navigation discussions can neither prove nor disprove, or really even support or cast doubt on the hypothesis.  It is to that end that some may label the discussions "pointless".

That said, I personally have enjoyed some of these discussions; GL's long and detailed analysis included.  And it was a navigation moment when the original Tighar team said; "Hey, if they followed 157 could they have ended up on one of these islands over here, instead of crashed and sank?" (or words to that effect) ...But at the end of the day navigation discussions  really do not contribute to proving or disproving the hypothesis.  It is not my place to assess whether these discussions should be included in the forum, I merely share these thoughts and observations in the spirit of explaining why the discussions are met, at times, with reproach.

Respectfully,

JB
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: visual counterfeit , navigation and subsequent demise
« Reply #70 on: September 30, 2013, 09:54:44 AM »

Jeff, et al;

I think it's important and relevant to our analysis of the Tighar hypothesis to realize that some questions are destined to never be truly answered.  Come the day when the conclusive piece of evidence is found to place our intrepid pair on Niku, how they ended up there cannot be known with entire certainty.  Whatever navigational decisions, errors, assumptions, readings, sightings, and the like that were made or failed to be made, even what charts were used, are forever lost with the crew.  I'll let others speak for themselves, but I believe this is the source of some of the frustration on the forum with long debates over what did or did not happen with regards to navigation.  Navigation discussions can neither prove nor disprove, or really even support or cast doubt on the hypothesis.  It is to that end that some may label the discussions "pointless".

That said, I personally have enjoyed some of these discussions; GL's long and detailed analysis included.  And it was a navigation moment when the original Tighar team said; "Hey, if they followed 157 could they have ended up on one of these islands over here, instead of crashed and sank?" (or words to that effect) ...But at the end of the day navigation discussions  really do not contribute to proving or disproving the hypothesis.  It is not my place to assess whether these discussions should be included in the forum, I merely share these thoughts and observations in the spirit of explaining why the discussions are met, at times, with reproach.

Respectfully,

JB

What he said.
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JNev

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Re: visual counterfeit , navigation and subsequent demise
« Reply #71 on: September 30, 2013, 10:40:34 AM »

Then 230 NM from Howland as a starting point on the LOP, or 70 NM from Howland (if I followed Gannon's point to Ric years ago correctly) or 'other' really have nothing to do with how likely the flight was to have arrived at Gardner?

Is that primarily, as suggested in this string, because we have moved beyond navigational concerns on the strength of the evidence found at Niku, as Ric stated earlier 'up thread' here? 

Sorry, I got the idea that Ric had somehow pinned a Gardner arrival to the necessity of arriving 'on the line' some 230 NM south of Howland and realized I must have missed that before. But if it doesn't matter - 230 NM, 70 NM or whatever, then 'never mind'...

But that leaves me curious - what then was the point of the 230 NM presumption as stated here by Ric, and why the concern with my wondering about it then?

Perhaps I'm just dense.
- Jeff Neville

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« Last Edit: September 30, 2013, 10:53:09 AM by Jeff Neville »
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: visual counterfeit , navigation and subsequent demise
« Reply #72 on: September 30, 2013, 11:04:45 AM »

Then 230 NM from Howland as a starting point on the LOP, or 70 NM from Howland (if I followed Gannon's pout to Ric years ago correctly) or 'other' really have nothing to do with how likely the flight was to have arrived at Gardner?

Is that primarily, as suggested in this string, because we have moved beyond navigational c

Whether or not they arrived at Gardner depends entirely upon what can be found on Gardner.  If conclusive proof is found on Gardner then they got to Gardner somehow but we'll never know exactly how.
The only point in even discussing navigation, weather, fuel consumption, radio propagation, etc. is to see if there is some reason they could not possibly have reached Gardner.  We're looking for disqualifiers for the Nikumaroro Hypothesis.  For example, if there is no way they had enough fuel to reach Gardner then there is no way they could get there  - just as there is no point in looking for Earhart in Tahiti. Likewise, if there is no way AE and FN could have gotten to Gardner before the water on the reef was too high to land, then they could not have landed safely on the reef and sent radio distress calls.  Research into radio propagation has failed to turn up a disqualifier and, in fact, shows a way they COULD HAVE gotten there in plenty of time that is consistent with everything else we think we know. 
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Jeff Victor Hayden

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Re: visual counterfeit , navigation and subsequent demise
« Reply #73 on: September 30, 2013, 01:11:27 PM »

Back to the origanal topic and navigation. It is a good example of where you actually are versus where you expect to be. In the case of NZ flight TE-901 unknown to them, the coordinates had been modified earlier that morning to correct the error introduced years previously and undetected until then. So instead of flying the track all previous flights had flown without any problems they ended up on a competely different track, with disasterous results.
In ther case of AE and FN? I really hope they were luckier with their 'where you think you are versus where you actually are' and, did make to Gardner.
This must be the place
 
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Lisa Grinnell

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Re: visual counterfeit , navigation and subsequent demise
« Reply #74 on: September 30, 2013, 09:23:53 PM »

Hello all, I realize I am asking a question likely asked before, yet wasn't able to dig up in a forum search: what clues about the navigation process might be discovered when the fuselage and other parts are are found and explored? Lisa G.
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