Endurance and Range...
O.K. I believe in the Factual side of this Project and I have continually said that I am not so concerned with the “Hypothetical”…. I provided a Hypothetical side of the Project because people basically demand to know how it could be done.
That is correct. Best Range is slightly higher than Best L/D (gives endurance). I wanted to attack "a worse case" scenario. My own experience when flying range was of an aircraft which had the Performance Tables based on 1.1 Vmd and designed in the late 50's early 60's….presumably for range because it could not do much else… designed for Short Range lifting, it was used for Medium Range and failed. The MAX Payload Weight Capacity was 29,000 pounds. On one flight from GANDER (Newfie) to LAJES (Azores) we worked out we could only carry just over 1000 pounds. That flight is not in my Logbook as there were two FE's on board and I did the preceeding leg. I recall the flight was over 8+ hours over the Atlantic avoidiing Wx at night with St.Elmo's fire around the windscreens....
As I said previously,
“There may therefore be a case for reviewing the fuel used at 12,000 feet from 0800 GMT up until TOD; 1912 GMT; 2014 GMT and what it would look like in fuel remaining at the point where the Electra was overhead TABITEUEA. All as a HYPOTHESIS of course. Don't expect a quick answer”
I am busy today and for the next three days and will think about starting a 1.1Vmd case based on the earlier work. Mainly because "
I want to know"...
In the meantime…. The early part of the flight is of no consequence to most people, they want to know what happened at Howland but for me the interesting part is the early part and I post this brief now for thought.
In the Earhart saga, we have to accept a few things.
The First thing is that they went by way of CHOISEUL Island (To avoid a LOW off the eastern end of New Britain) and that the 0518 GMT call giving a Lat/Long of 7d 3' South and
150.7 E was erroneous for the Easting and should have been received as 157.0 East, giving us a
PR over Choiseul and if we accepted the time of 5 hrs 18 minutes (5.3 hours) to do the distance of 686 Sm we get an AV, G/S of 129 mph which includes the Cruise Climb out of LAE..
Second is that from Choiseul to NUKUMANU the distance is 224 Sm and we have timings of 0518 and 0718 (two hrs) between
PR Tx's which only delivers an AV G/S for the distance of "112 mph", which cannot be correct as we know they are in an abeam wind. The islands of Ontong Java were off to the Starboard side. It is likely that when scanning for the Atoll (12 miles wide) as the FP time came up after not seeing it "dead ahead", they saw it out to the right and changed their heading and that Noonan did a timing from the turn and later worked out where they had been "at the turnpoint" in a rough Lat/Long which gives us the
PR: 4d 33.5' S, 159 07’ E which was then broadcast after he had worked it out and she sent it at 0718 GMT which was her "normal" broadcast time....
Third is that the call "Ship in sight ahead" made at 1030 GMT was the
ONTARIO and that they were overhead by 1036 GMT giving us a 10.6 (in decimal) hours flight time to cover the 1362 Sm from Lae (through the doglegs of Choiseul and Nukumanu),
That then delivers an average G/S so far of 128.5 mph LAE-
ONTARIO.
If we knew what the actual time at the "Nukumanu Turnpoint " was we can obtain an AV G/S NUKUMANU-
ONTARIO. I believe the turnpoint was at 0700 GMT and arrival overhead the ONTARIO was at 1036 GMT giving a sector time of 3.6 hours. The USN position was at a distance of 417 SM but the actual was 446 Sm (acc. Google Earth). These two distances deliver AV G/S’s of 116 mph and 124 mph respectively, the question then being: “Did Noonan take an Astro shot to determine the ship’s position within the ten-mile “Circle of Position” ? ...and get his correct sector G/S".
The G/S’s included the climb out from the NUKUMANU area but are still “low” against the FP average speed of 138 mph planned for a 12 mph wind. In the first instance the wind would be around 34 mph and in the second the already known 26 mph wind.
We do not know the wind at 10,000 feet or 12,000 feet whichever ALT they were at but we do know that the surface wind was 20 Knots from 082 degrees as recorded in the Log of the ONTARIO. When I first started working on the speeds and range, to "make" time and distance, I kept getting a wind at Altitude overhead the ONTARIO of 35 mph from the East.
This was somewhat borne out by what result they had got at Nukumanu by their Tx of a wind at 8,000 of 26.5 mph from which a Vector diagram confirmed their mileage drift to the West.
Fourth is that we cannot accept that the
PR's (Choiseul and Nukumanu) are
PR's at the time transmitted. The closest we have for a
PR is the 1030 call and we accept that was the
ONTARIO laying some distance ahead and below.
That is a basis of what we have to accept from the meagre information transmitted from the Electra and from the log of the
Ontario.
..that's all for now.