Uhh greg47? you claimed " Expertise has established she arrived in the vicinity of Howland with an hours fuel "
It appears you have NOT read the Mantaro wqhite paper published in 2016 which I believe easily refutes whatever ' expertise ' involved re the one hours fuel
http://www.mantaro.com/downloads/Ele...ia_Earhart.pdf
In short - using zero wind and 1200 gallons and flying for best range per kelly Johnson numbers and using modern computers to verify his data within a few percent. The following results are shown on page 18
Navigation
At this point in time, the simulation contains no provisions for modeling navigation. The flight is
assumed to be in a straight line from beginning to end.
ZERO headwinds 1200 gal gas
Range 4100 mi 4034 mi
Endurance 26:30 hours 28:03 hours
Now since Howland was in rounded 2600 miles and fuel load appeared to be 1100- or about 5 percent less then the 1200 gal used for kelley and mantero calcs the following simple generalization would apply
2600/4034 = 64 percent range under optimum conditions 4034/28 hours = avg 144 mph ground speed 1200/28 = 42 gph average
with zero headwind 2600/144 = 18 hours. 18 hours times say 45 gph = 810 gallons used 1200 gallons minus 810 = 390 gallons = 8 plus hours
Now given there was perhaps a 30 mph headwind 30 mph times say 20 hours = 600 miles but remaining 8 hours times 144 mph = 1152 miles 1152 miles - 600 = 550 miles = 3.8 hours
So worst case sill leaves around 3 plus hours fuel.
I'm putting together an iterative spreads sheet which should make it easy to change a few variables re known times and milage to determine max and min milage from howland they could have turned around
that seems to be somemwhere between 300 to 600 miles from howland as first cut. download my previous link for a first cut based on mantero data
This is my pdf file-plot showing max range versus distance from Howland when earhart turned back to ' crash' site
BASELINE ITERATION-A.pdf
Conso