....Are there more numbers or other inferences that can be made with this understanding?
It's not an "understanding." It's an assumption without evidence. If you're going to change the message you can make it say anything you want.
In 2018, Bob Brandenburg and I agreed the message was "credible". Today, I would put it in the "uncertain" category.
Let's take a hard look at the 281 message and see if there is reason to think it was a legitimate communication from Earhart.
• Could U.S.Navy Radio Wailupe have heard a code transmission sent from the Electra at Gardner Island?
We don't know because we don't know what frequency they heard it on or whether the signal was voice modulated (which it would have to be if it was from the Electra).
• In fact, we don't know anything directly from Wailupe. All we know is that at 1312Z on 7/5/37,
Itasca received a message from COMHAWSEC (Commander Coast Guard Hawaiian Section, Honolulu):
FOLLOWING COPIED NAVY RADIO WAILUPE 1130 TO 1230 GCT QUOTE 281 NORTH HOWLAND CALL KHAQQ BEYOND NORTH DONT HOLD WITH US MUCH LONGER ABOVE WATER SHUT OFF UNQUOTE KEYED TRANSMISSION EXTREMELY POOR KEYING BEHIND CARRIER FRAGMENTARY PHRASES BUT COPIED BY THREE OPERATORS
• Wailupe notified COMHAWSEC but not
Itasca. Why not? On other occasions Wailupe communicated directly with
Itasca.
• The reported "fragmentary phrases" are all run together so we don't know which words go together. For example, is it "281 North. Howland call KHAQQ" or "281 North Howland. Call KHAQQ"? To make sense, there must be missing words. If we speculatively fill in the blanks we could say she said, 'Howland is
281 north of us. We heard
Howland call KHAQQ.
• Wailupe heard this over a period of one hour from 1130 to 1230 GCT. If the phrases were repeated over and over for an hour it seems odd that three operators would repeatedly miss the same words, so it's more likely the phrases came in separately at some time during the hour.
• To make the message make sense you have to change the message. If you assume words are missing, "..beyond north" still doesn't make sense and you can't construct an English sentence that includes the phrase "...don't hold with us much longer." If it was really "...won't hold with us much longer", what is it that won't hold with us much longer? The airplane? The radio? In either case, saying it "won't hold with us" seems like a strange way of putting it.
• If this was a genuine message it was a voice modulated signal sent by keying the mic, an extremely awkward technique. Each time she keyed the mic, the dynamotor spooled up to boost the current from the battery to the transmitter. Releasing the key shut everything off, so sending code by keying the mic meant that the whole system had to spool and shut down to send each dot or dash. In other words, there would be gap of several seconds between dots or dashes. Nobody else heard anything like that during that one-hour period. At 1223 GCT, Pan Am took a bearing on a very strong voice modulated carrier wave on 3105.
Bottom line: We don't know enough about the 281 message to make an informed judgement about it's credibility, but it seems more likely to me that it was a crude hoax..
