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Author Topic: solution to mystery only requires correcting radio log errors  (Read 46902 times)

frank rockenstein

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The errors are not in the station log but in the translation of ship time to GMT.
All GMT  times with the exception of the time of sunrise are off by 30 minutes.

There are actually two types of errors - The time zone on the ship was 11+30 not 10+30
which was the TZ used on the island. The second type of error is the improper adding
of 30 minutes to the time zone offset. The +30 is simply the nomenclature for describing
where the TZ begins and the direction from the prime meridian,plus for west minus for east)
There are no partial hour offsets in the nautical TZ system.
So a ship time of 0646 yields a GMT of 17:46 not 17:16
The sunrise time of 17:45 was correctly shown.

Now we may make two highly probable assumptions - that the radio call at 200 miles out
was based on a celestial observation by FN during nautical twilight and that the
call from 100 miles was based on the observation of the sunrise to determine the distance
to the sun LOP.

And now the clouds part and the sun shines thru and the mystery is solved because
the time of their sighting of the sun was at the exact time of the sunrise at Howland.
The fact is that the were there right on time but they believed that they were 100NM
out. And so the continues flying for another 100+ miles to where they mistakenly
thought the sun LOP was.

How did this happen?
Obviously their clock which is the basis for longitude calculations was set incorrectly.
AE had send a message from Lae in which she said that FN was concerned about his
clocks. As a one minute error in the clock would mean an error of 15NM it is unlikely
he would risk his life with a clock which he did not trust and so he most likely set
his clock and made a bonehead error in doing so.

Recreating the procedure which he would have used for the longitude of LAE
one will be required to make a decmial hour conversion to minutes and seconds.
If one should read 4.2 hours as 4 hours and 20 minutes instead of And  4 hours an 12 minutes
then an eight minute error will result.   And an eight minutes is 120 nautical miles.

So they over flew howland by 120 nm and that is where they are now 120NM east
somewhere on the sum LOP and 18000 ft down.

There are many other details and attributions which I have  used to come to this
conclusion and many many hours researching this subject.

I know many others have invested much of their time and resources on other theories
but I believe that this is the most likely  solution to the mystery.

If anyone has a lotta spare bucks and some side scan radar - go for it.
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: solution to mystery only requires correcting radio log errors
« Reply #1 on: March 21, 2015, 06:12:24 PM »

There are actually two types of errors - The time zone on the ship was 11+30 not 10+30
which was the TZ used on the island.

Itasca used GMT minus 11.5 hours for local time.  The radio operators on Howland used Hawaii Time (GMT minus 10.5) for local time for ease of setting radio schedules with Honolulu.  The Itasca radio logs are in local time - GMT minus 11.5.  The Howland radio log is in Hawaiian Time - GMT minus 10.5. Today Hawaiian Time is GMT minus 10 hours but in 1937 it was 10.5.

The second type of error is the improper adding
of 30 minutes to the time zone offset. The +30 is simply the nomenclature for describing
where the TZ begins and the direction from the prime meridian,plus for west minus for east)
There are no partial hour offsets in the nautical TZ system.

You'll have to provide a source for that assertion.  I think you're wrong.
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frank rockenstein

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Re: solution to mystery only requires correcting radio log errors
« Reply #2 on: March 21, 2015, 08:18:39 PM »

When i was young, I believed everything that was written.
Now I am old and I believe virtually nothing that is written
unless it can pass my test of common sense.
The idea that the military would have any need for 30 minute offsets
does not pass my common sense test.
The primary use of time to the military is to coordinate activities
and the added complexity of partial hour offsets adds nothing.
There are places which have 30 minute offsets but these are for local political
or economic advantages and this does not apply to a global military organization.
This is the same reason that there is no dAaylight saving offset in the
nautical time system
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Martin X. Moleski, SJ

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Re: solution to mystery only requires correcting radio log errors
« Reply #3 on: March 22, 2015, 12:25:57 AM »

When i was young, I believed everything that was written.
Now I am old and I believe virtually nothing that is written
unless it can pass my test of common sense.
The idea that the military would have any need for 30 minute offsets
does not pass my common sense test.

Randy Jacobson created a magnificent table showing the timezones in use in different places and on different ships on the relevant dates for his database.

The Ontario is the only ship that does not use half-hour offsets.  The other nine (9) ships do.

Oh, I guess make that ten (10).  COMINBATFOR seems to be a ship: "Commander, Minecraft Battle Force, US Fleet, USS Oglala, Captain D. W. Bagley, based in Honolulu.  He is also the Senior Officer Present Afloat                                                     (SOPA) in the Honolulu area."

LTM,

           Marty
           TIGHAR #2359A
 
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frank rockenstein

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Re: solution to mystery only requires correcting radio log errors
« Reply #4 on: March 22, 2015, 07:18:42 AM »

In fact under the nautical system Howland should have a 12 hour offset and
Honolulu should be 11. No one on the island was talking to Hawaii but the ship was
and that is why they were 11 off and not 12. The people on the island used 10
off as they had more DF prep to do before sunrise. Early to bed early to rise  was
discretionary so long as the correct offset was stated in communications.

The +  minutes refers to the longitudinal position of the  zenith of the sun 30 minutes after
it passes Greenwich which is 7,5 degrees west and the beginning of the first 15 degree TZ
offset. This 7.5 degree is an offset in longitude and not a clock offset and must be taken
into consideration for the purpose of determining which TZ any given longitude falls into.

If RJ found all the ships to be on 30 minute clock offsets then  that just reinforces
my opinion that this was just standard navy procedure for time zone description and not
an actual 30 minute clock offset. Probably ships operating in the eastern hemisphere
would have logs referencing -30 minutes.

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Ric Gillespie

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Re: solution to mystery only requires correcting radio log errors
« Reply #5 on: March 22, 2015, 07:19:38 AM »

When i was young, I believed everything that was written.
Now I am old and I believe virtually nothing that is written
unless it can pass my test of common sense.
The idea that the military would have any need for 30 minute offsets
does not pass my common sense test.

When I was young I believed what people told me as long it seemed to make sense.
Now I am old (sort of old - I'm 67) and I have learned that historical documents usually trump anecdotal recollections.
I have also learned that what does not make sense to me in a modern context may have made sense in a different historical context.
Your demonstrably incorrect assertion that the military did not use 30 minute offsets in 1937 is based solely on your 2015 perception of what makes "common sense."  It's a classic example of the invalid methodology that has long plagued the advocates of Crashed & Sank.
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: solution to mystery only requires correcting radio log errors
« Reply #6 on: March 22, 2015, 07:39:35 AM »

No one on the island was talking to Hawaii but the ship was
and that is why they were 11 off and not 12.

Prior to the Itasca's visit the Department of Interior radio operators on Howled kept regular radio schedules with Hawaii and used Hawaiian Time which was GMT minus 10.5.  The Howland Island Radio Log was kept by the radio operators on Howland during the Earhart search. Frank Cipriani, USCG Radio Man Second Class, was placed on the island with the direction-finding radio set; the resident ham operators, Yau Fai Lum, Henry Lau, and Ah Kin Leong stood radio watches as well. The log was kept by them, probably in hand-written form, and later typed up by Cipriani from the rough logs. The first day is headed 2 July; however, the date was actually 1 July.

The people on the island used 10 off as they had more DF prep to do before sunrise. Early to bed early to rise  was
discretionary so long as the correct offset was stated in communications.

Please provide a source - any source - for your assertion (other than that it seems like common sense to you).

The +  minutes refers to the longitudinal position of the  zenith of the sun 30 minutes after
it passes Greenwich which is 7,5 degrees west and the beginning of the first 15 degree TZ
offset. This 7.5 degree is an offset in longitude and not a clock offset and must be taken
into consideration for the purpose of determining which TZ any given longitude falls into.

Please provide a source - any source - for your assertion (other than that it seems like common sense to you).

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Martin X. Moleski, SJ

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Re: solution to mystery only requires correcting radio log errors
« Reply #7 on: March 22, 2015, 09:47:09 AM »

This, I think, is a correct account of all of the transmissions heard by various radio operators during the fatal flight, with times corrected to GMT, based on Randy Jacobson's work.

This is Tom King's presentation of Jacobson's credentials: "Dr. Randal S. Jacobson is a geophysicist with the U.S. Navy, currently working on airborne mine hunting and mine countermeasure systems. Jacobson has a Ph.D. in oceanography/earth sciences from Scripps Institute of Oceanography, taught geophysics at Oregon State University, and was a program officer in geophysics at the Office of Naval Research, responsible for evaluating and funding proposals.  He has written extensively on underwater seismic propagation, evolution of oceanic crust, and was the state seismologist for Oregon in the 1980s. His work has involved going to sea, using sonar, magnetometers, ocean bottom seismometers, and other geophysical systems.  He is an avid historian, and enjoys restoring classic cars."

This is a discussion of 1937 time zones, including a cheat sheet from Ric.
LTM,

           Marty
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frank rockenstein

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Re: solution to mystery only requires correcting radio log errors
« Reply #8 on: March 24, 2015, 11:00:31 AM »

Stubborn old coot that I have become and imbued with the self assurance that comes to those
who are well endowed with more than their share of "common sense" I refuse to yield one solar
minute on this subject. Thankfully age has not robbed me of all "sense of humour" either.


Wether it be the ship's , GMT or UTC clocks, all minute hands, wherever they be, point alike -
exempting of course Einstein's clock and those controlled by solar miscreants.

As in other spheres, a literal interpretation  where not intended can cause confusion or even worse.

Care must be taken not to conflate the beginning of a TZ with the minute offset of that time zone's clock.
If a time zone starts 30 minutes (7.5 degrees) from the models conventional hour ( 15 degree)
boundary) this does not imply that a 30 minute clock change is in order else it will be but
with great difficultly that you will ever again find your own door.
 - Kepler's last admonition to me on his death bed, as I recall.

Truth must stand on its own feet and is independent of its source.
An esteemed attribution does not in itself confer validity and the inverse is also true.

Therefore I will in the future continue to post inferences without attribution on this subject
and defend those statements on their merit based on logic.

 Of course in this endeavour we must work based on probability as we can not possibly know
with absolute certainty exactly what happened in 1937.

We must postulate and hypothesise and if necessary use unfounded assumptions in so doing
and then of test our theory as best and if we can.

Hopefully we can arrive at a theory which has a high probability of being correct.

As an example of what I mean - consider AE's 100 and 200mnm mile transmissions.
The time between those transmissions was about 30 minutes which means
that she was averaging about 200 nm/hour. That is at or above the max speed
for that aircraft. So if she was running low on fuel, what was that all about?

I would suggest that she was coming down from altitude in order to prepare for
intercepting the sunrise as low and close to Howland as possible  to minimise the
altitude factor in the timing of the sunrise and decrease the effects of crosswind drift.
Here she was trading altitude for time and distance.

Also notice that from the 100nm mark to her destination that the time duration
was around one hour.
Clearly she had slowed considerably, probably to fly at the most fuel efficient speed
after  catching the sunrise.

This fits in perfectly with my assumption that the 100nm transmission was in
response to the sunrise.

Remember that I am not accepting the 30 minute clock offset as valid.

And so once again, she was there right on schedule but she believed
that were still 100 nm out. That points to a clock setting error of around eight
minutes.

Let the games begin...
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: solution to mystery only requires correcting radio log errors
« Reply #9 on: March 24, 2015, 11:16:22 AM »

I don't have time for games.  Truth, to you, is whatever you decide based upon your superior common sense. Sources that conflict with your common sense are simply dismissed.  I can debate facts. I can't debate pure ego.
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Jeff Lange

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Re: solution to mystery only requires correcting radio log errors
« Reply #10 on: March 25, 2015, 05:31:31 AM »

I refuse to believe that "frank rockenstein" is the real name of this poster, and believe he is truly just a troll.
Jeff Lange

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Ric Gillespie

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Re: solution to mystery only requires correcting radio log errors
« Reply #11 on: March 25, 2015, 05:58:31 AM »

I refuse to believe that "frank rockenstein" is the real name of this poster, and believe he is truly just a troll.

I agree with you.  Whoever he is, we should not be giving him our time.  I'll lock this thread.
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: solution to mystery only requires correcting radio log errors
« Reply #12 on: January 15, 2016, 03:06:48 PM »

I have unlocked this topic at Frank Rockenstein's request who asserts:
A.  "that I do exist and you can verify that fact by searching for francis rockenstein at
411.com. My current and for the past 31 years address is butler pa."
B.  "I won't ask for an apology for being rudely and unjustly locked out of my topic as I have used the time constructively to find exactly the kind of historical info that you require and which supports my theory."
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Monty Fowler

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Re: solution to mystery only requires correcting radio log errors
« Reply #13 on: January 15, 2016, 05:45:40 PM »

Moderation in all things.

LTM,
Monty Fowler, TIGHAR No. 2180 EC
Ex-TIGHAR member No. 2189 E C R SP, 1998-2016
 
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frank rockenstein

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Re: solution to mystery only requires correcting radio log errors
« Reply #14 on: January 15, 2016, 09:35:20 PM »

I have found two messages in the Tighar archives which I believe support my ttheory.

The first is the last message from AE received at Lae which was a position report.
An analysis of that message does I believe indicate that her clock was indeed incorrect.

The second is a message to all ships referencing AE's last message received by Itasca
at 8:43/45.  The text of the message contains the GMT time when that message was received
and was sent by the commanding officer - probably Adm. Black.  It shows that the clock had been
moved into sync with AE's (GMT) and was no longer on a half hour TZ offset.

I shall in following posts include those messages and my analysis of them as they apply
to my theory.
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