Rivet lines on the patch

[Ric Gillespie]

I asked Jeff Glickman to put together an explanation of how he was able to detect the rivet lines on the Miami Patch.  He's happy to oblige.  He's traveling at the moment but he thought he'd be able to get to it in the next week or two. I'll pass it along when I have it. 

[Hal Beck]

I asked Jeff Glickman to put together an explanation of how he was able to detect the rivet lines on the Miami Patch.  He's happy to oblige.  He's traveling at the moment but he thought he'd be able to get to it in the next week or two. I'll pass it along when I have it.

Any word from Jeff Glickman about putting together that explanation?  I imagine a key product of Jeff Glickman's analysis was an enhanced version of the Miami Patch photo.  While we await word from Mr. Glickman, could you  post that enhanced photo -- a picture is worth a thousand words?...

Thanks,

[Ric Gillespie]

While we await word from Mr. Glickman, could you  post that enhanced photo -- a picture is worth a thousand words?..

Jeff's has been dealing with family health issues so I haven't pressed him on this.
But I can tell you that there is no "enhanced photo."  The forensic process Jeff used to detect the presence of rivet lines was a multi-step procedure involved measuring the relative reflectivity of the aluminum.  Simply put, because the aluminum along the lines of rivets was slightly depressed due to the riveting process, the reflectivity of the aluminum surface along the rivet lines was different from the rest of the patch.  The visual output of the procedure is a vertical line that exhibits "spikes" where the reflectivity is different.  That's the best layman's explanation I can give you.  It's all way over my head.
I'll be seeing Jeff in Washington on January 11th and I'll remind him about the rivet line explanation.

[Neff Jacobs]

Is Jeff going to reveal his method?  A cornerstone of scientific method is repeatability. Having gone thru a number of patch photos several seem to have the same problem.  A portion of the photo near the front of the plane is in focus and has sufficient resolution to see rivets, but  the area of the patch seems to be outside the focused field and areas where there are rivets are as bland as anything else.   And to be honest I have an interest in recovering rivet lines and locations in photos which are either slightly out of focus or otherwise have less than required resolution.  Elsewhere I research British Locomotives from the 1830s to the 1870s. As you can imagine the photos are often poor quality.   The exact location and pattern of rivets is often a bone of contention among modelers and a good method to pull rivet patterns from poor photos would be a wonderful asset.
Neff

[Ric Gillespie]

Is Jeff going to reveal his method?

Yes. Jeff will reveal his method.

  A cornerstone of scientific method is repeatability.

That's true but I suspect that repeating Jeff's method would take someone with his level of expertise.

[Neff Jacobs]

Ric,
Thanks.  How does it go?   "A person sufficiently skilled in the art"
Neff

[Ric Gillespie]

Jeff says he's making good progress with the rivet lines report.  He estimates he'll have something for us in a couple of weeks.

[Tim Collins]

 The crickets are getting mighty tired of chirping, any update on the status of the report?

[Ric Gillespie]

The crickets are getting mighty tired of chirping, any update on the status of the report?

The crickets will have to keep chirping.  Jeff is holding off working further on the report while we follow up on a new lead that could result in much better imagery of the patch than anything we've seen so far. Sorry I can't say more at this time.

[Monty Fowler]

I guess I'm missing something - wouldn't there have to be a report about methodology, etc., regardless of the resolution of this new photo? Saying we can see something without being able to demonstrate how we are able to see it renders whatever this photo might show as moot.

Or so it seems to me.

LTM,
Monty Fowler, TIGHAR No. 2189 EC

[Dale O. Beethe]

I would think if the photo clearly shows rivet lines it would largely negate the need for explaining the methodology.  I'm sure that Mr. Glickman, being a professional, will probably explain it anyway.

[Monty Fowler]

Even if rivet lines are plainly visible, there's still the question of spacing as far as the rows of rivets and the space between the individual rivets, and how that may, or may not, match up with the putative patch. That's going to have to be a very fine tolerance indeed for the putative patch to be generally accepted as what we're all hoping it is.

LTM,
Monty Fowler, TIGHAR No. 2189 EC

[Ric Gillespie]

That's going to have to be a very fine tolerance indeed for the putative patch to be generally accepted as what we're all hoping it is.

Define "generally accepted."

[Monty Fowler]

Quoting from you in the Plexiglas thread, "But I become increasingly convinced that the only thing that will meet the any-idiot standard is conclusively identifiable Lockheed 10 wreckage discovered in situ."

LTM,
Monty Fowler, TIGHAR No. 2189 EC

[Ric Gillespie]

Quoting from you in the Plexiglas thread, "But I become increasingly convinced that the only thing that will meet the any-idiot standard is conclusively identifiable Lockheed 10 wreckage discovered in situ."

Do you understand what "in situ" means in this context?