Okay, I'll play. What Betty wrote in her notebook was "South 391065 Z or E". Some time (probably years) later, she added her parenthetical interpretation that the entry meant coordinates "{S 309' 165° E}". Those are not valid coordinates, but let's say she meant "S 3° 09', 165° E".
If I was stranded on an uninhabited island I think I would make sure I wasn't transmitting the wrong coordinates if I wanted to get found. And for sure I wouldn't transmit coordinates on the wrong side of the date line by mistake. I don't care how sloppy noonans notes were after making it this far around the earth AE should have known the relative quadrant she was in and the difference between NS and EW.
Bettys Parenthetical correction especially if she did it much later shows us that she is clearly dyslexic. Did Betty mention anything about the coordinate correction in the margin? What exactly did she say?!?!?
The Chatter report shows us the convention AE used to report her position.
3.19 pm on 6210 KC – “HEIGHT 10000 FEET POSITION 150.7 east 7.3 south CUMULUS CLOUDS EVERYTHING OKAY”
5.18 p.m. “POSITION 4.33 SOUTH 159.7 EAST HEIGHT 8000 FEET OVER CUMULUS CLOUDS WIND 23 KNOTS”.
She flips the order of S and E and she fails to maintain precision of digits as 4.33 is a more precise measurement than 7.3. She does not seem to mix up E and W. Although if one did mix up east and west anything to the west is also to the east of you if you take the long way 'round.
Oh that reminds me! why did chatter say that AE would be txing at 18 past the hour? Didn't everywhere besides the chatter report say 15 past the hour and that she was not going to have any two way communication with any individual station(removing the possiblitlity of a second conversation with LAE after her 15 min report anyone else would be listening for.) A possible way this fits into my theory is Chatter knew her chronometer had been sabotaged and was off by 3-4 minuites and said this(probably overthinking the deception being that he was serious IFR pilot) to suggest it was not a mistake to be hearing her transmissions offset by 3 mins. Many of the ship radio logs also show her transmissions off by 3ish mins and I also find the mass 3 min window/corrections throughout the ship logs seeming to be atypical. This would put her navigation 50 miles short of howland and her position reports would be 50 miles east of where she actually was.
3.09 S 156(dyslexic correction) E begins to look closer to my location and reported position is to the east which is consistent with the 3 min error explanation.
Lets assume she had the tanks all the way full. 1200 gallons. Lae - Howland is a little over 2500 Statute Miles. I am going to assume an average speed of 160mph. She left at 10am. The trip to 50miles short of howland should be about 15.5hrs.
I have never tried to use an air almanac or ever done any sort of celestial navigation. I've never been on a boat with a map... I know how to use a plotter and navigate using charts in an airplane but prefer to rely on GPS whenever possible and have an airport to land at in sight at all times ready to declare an emergency and land in the event of GPS satellites going offline or an electrical system failure... Joke...
Can you imagine working ATC in the event the Chinese nuke enough GPS sats to make GPS navigation impossible for aircraft over the continental US and subsequently having every single stateside airborne flight declare an emergency. LOL. I know there are plenty of older pilots with more experience than me more who are more dependent on GPS than I am... My mother(AE buff) was at work in a dark room of a flight service station when all aircraft were grounded following the 9/11 attack.Noonan is looking at an air almanac I assume along side his notes and his sextant. This tells me a few things.
They would be ariving at Howland around 1:30 or 2am? ...I thought it was later in the morning... Maybe 160mph is too fast of an average. Help me on this...? but regardless of the speed and arrival time, the way an air almanac works is, noonan would have to turn his air almanac to the next page after midnight came.
I also believe the way and air almanac works is that he would have to turn back a page as they cross the anti-meridian.
Then if they turned around and recross the anti meridian he has to once more again turn forward a page?
Actually I am pretty sure I could possibly might for sure have that all somehow wrong maybe. It's pretty confusing thinking about all the page turning to me if that is even how it works. Could Noonan have made a mistake in the direction of his page turns and gotten confused as to what day it was vs. their local time zone and thus putting them a degree or two off for each mistake he made by being on the wrong page of the air almanac? I get confused trying to figure it out how it would work so I could see stressed out/loss of faith in navigational ability/sleep deprived/hit his head in the wreck Noonan getting confused after turning around and recrossing the date line as to what day it is and what page to be on. This could further account for the longitudinal difference between the betty coordinates and the PNG island site.
I could have this all wrong I am not sure. It has been a while since I initially jam fit these possible puzzle pieces together and came up with this theory in the first place.
It does seem the 666 report tells us that the possible endurance with the passenger compartment fuel tanks filled with 1200gallons and the plane at 16500lb take off weight would be 4000mi. My suggested flight when accounting for turning around 50 miles longitudinally short of howland and going back the way they came is 4500ish miles. 500 miles seems like a lot of extra miles to be able to make it. Would there not have been any additional included calculated margin of error or reserve in the endurance report? Could the one of a kind fuel tank setup have had any fuel reserve built in? We're talking about 1936 2 barrel carburetors in a draw through? supercharged 9 cylinder radial engine. I think the fuel metering would have been less than precise and if I were PIC I would plan on the conservative side of endurance. Also consider on a 4000mile trip an extra 500 miles is about 11.3% difference. My personal limited probably retarded comparison... in a cessna 150 with an O200 that normally burns 5gph. 12% better would be 4.4gph which I have been able to achieve even better than that with careful conservative mixture operation while still safely operating the engine rich of peak, all without an EGT system. Wind will never really help you when you are considering a return flight unless you get very lucky and the wind direction changes in your favor one way to in your favor the other way but it could happen especially if noonan was able to use his drift sight(?) and they found the best altitude. When you are talking about 4000miles 12% would make enough difference to make it back to my PNG Island(lets actually call that one Adidas.) For the TIGHAR Island lets stick to Nike please.
Super unlikely but I wonder if once "half (h)our fuel left" at altitude you could shut down an engine and get better efficiency in an electra considering the double tail to compensate for asymmetrical thrust. I know this would for sure not work in a 400 series twin cessna(no doubt unrecoverable stall spin crash a big factor being the size of the vertical stabilizer.) Anyone done a check ride in an electra to know if they actually would simulate an engine out?
https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/17480/can-a-four-engine-aircraft-with-limited-fuel-gain-extra-range-by-shutting-down-oMy way of fitting the puzzle together could be a long shot but I don't see AE grossly misunderstanding noonans notes and transmitting the Ontario location from the wrong relative quadrant she was in while seeking rescue from an uninhabited island being more likely than the way I fit this all together... Would they have even have known where the Ontario was? I maybe remember a telegram from before the flight containing this information but i'm not sure now.
ADIDAS = All Day I Dream About Sex. Lets not forget the Adidas slogan either: "Impossible is Nothing."
I hope the joking tone of this post is perceived and I don't further upset anyone. Additionally please consider the actual facts of my suggestion carefully before dismissing me all together.
Okay I've been proof reading this post for hours now. It may not be perfect but I am posting it...
Ooops right before posting I realized I am forgetting to consider 10AM is LAE timezone... See I am confused on how to fix this all now. I think my point here still holds true in that they would have been flying at midnight and zone time and crossing/recrossing the date line while using celestial navigation might be more confusing than typical to a 1937 navigator.
Edit/add:
@Ric Gillespie. I was misremembering the Report 478 as the POH. My bad. wishful thinking hoping the endurance potential would be 4000kts rather than statute miles.
Author
Topic: Different island .. I got pictures. (Read 19838 times)
