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Amelia Earhart PNG Theory

Old 14th Jul 2018, 08:48
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David, Is this article going to be available online? How is the easiest way for people to see it who live in other parts of the World?
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Old 14th Jul 2018, 17:33
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@propertee64

Like a lot of newspapers these days, "The Australian" likes subscriptions ie; Pay to Read..... There are some other dreadful newspapers that go this way. it is a wonder that people do subscribe to them ....... What I had planned to do was scan it and send out to anyone who sends me their email address. The Saturday edition at the newstands is $3.50 so buying a lot of those would add up. The other way is that I will ask the Journo who wrote the article if he can get me an e-copy that I can send far and wide. I'll try that but if not possible then scans will have to do.

Regards,
David
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Old 15th Jul 2018, 07:32
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Did the Oz article happen...didnt see anything in Fridays or the W/E Oz.
Look fwd to seeing it in whatever form.
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Old 25th Jul 2018, 17:44
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A TIGHAR paper about supposed radio calls is being picked up by the media:

https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/...ioAnalysis.pdf

It claims that people like a 15-year-old girl with 1930's radio equipment could pick up the HF voice signal from a 50 watt transmitter due to the propagation of harmonics of the 3105 or 6210 MHz frequencies from the Pacific Ocean to the continental U.S.

Dozens heard Amelia Earhart’s final, chilling pleas for help, researchers say

By Cleve R. Wootson Jr. The Washington Post

Amelia Earhart waded into the Pacific Ocean and climbed into her downed and disabled Lockheed Electra.

She started the engine, turned on the two-way radio and sent out a plea for help, one more desperate than previous messages.

The high tide was getting higher, she had realized. Soon it would suck the plane into deeper water, cutting Earhart off from civilization – and any chance of rescue. Across the world, a 15-year-old girl listening to the radio in St. Petersburg, Fla., transcribed some of the desperate phrases she heard: “waters high,” “water’s knee deep – let me out” and “help us quick.”

A housewife in Toronto heard a shorter message, but it was no less dire: “We have taken in water . . . we can’t hold on much longer.”

That harrowing scene, the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) believes, was probably one of the final moments of Earhart’s life. The group put forth the theory in a paper that analyzes radio distress calls heard in the days after Earhart disappeared.
In the summer of 1937, she had sought to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe. Instead, TIGHAR’s theory holds, she ended up marooned on a desert island, radioing for help.

Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, could only call for help when the tide was so low it wouldn’t flood the engine, TIGHAR theorized. That limited their pleas for help to a few hours each night.

It wasn’t enough, TIGHAR director Ric Gillespie told The Washington Post, and the pair died as castaways.

But those radio messages form a historical record – evidence that Gillespie says runs counter to the U.S. Navy’s official conclusion that Earhart and Noonan died shortly after crashing into the Pacific Ocean.

“These active versus silent periods and the fact that the message changes on July 5 and starts being worried about water and then is consistently worried about water after that – there’s a story there,” Gillespie said.

“We’re feeding it to the public in bite-sized chunks. I’m hoping that people will smack their foreheads like I did.”

Some of Earhart’s final messages were heard by members of the military and others looking for Earhart, Gillespie said. Others caught the attention of people who just happened to be listening to their radios when they stumbled across random pleas for help.

Almost all of those messages were discounted by the U.S. Navy, which concluded that Earhart’s plane went down somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, then sank to the seabed.

Gillespie has been trying to debunk that finding for three decades. He believes that Earhart spent her final days on then-uninhabited Gardner Island. She may have been injured, Noonan was probably worse, but the crash wasn’t the end of them.

On July 2, 1937, just after Earhart’s plane disappeared, the U.S. Navy put out an “all ships, all stations” bulletin, TIGHAR wrote. Authorities asked anyone with a radio and a trained ear to listen in to the frequencies she had been using on her trip, 3105 and 6210 kilohertz.

It was not an easy task. The Electra’s radio was designed to communicate only within a few hundred miles. The Pacific Ocean is much bigger.

The searchers listening to Earhart’s frequencies heard a carrier wave, which indicated that someone was speaking, but most heard nothing more than that. Others heard what they interpreted to be a crude attempt at Morse code.

But thanks to the scientific principle of harmonics, TIGHAR says, others heard much more. In addition to the primary frequencies, “the transmitter also put out ‘harmonics (multiples)’ of those wavelengths,” the paper says. “High harmonic frequencies ‘skip’ off the ionosphere and can carry great distances, but clear reception is unpredictable.”

That means Earhart’s cries for help were heard by people who just happened to be listening to their radios at the right time.

According to TIGHAR’s paper:

“Scattered across North America and unknown to each other, each listener was astonished to suddenly hear Amelia Earhart pleading for help. They alerted family members, local authorities or local newspapers. Some were investigated by government authorities and found to be believable. Others were dismissed at the time and only recognized many years later. Although few in number, the harmonic receptions provide an important glimpse into the desperate scene that played out on the reef at Gardner Island.”

The tide probably forced Earhart and Noonan to hold to a schedule. Seek shelter, shade and food during the sweltering day, then venture out to the craft at low tide, to try the radio again.

Back in the United States, people heard things, tidbits that pointed at trouble.

On July 3, for example, Nina Paxton, an Ashland, Kentucky, woman, said she heard Earhart say “KHAQQ calling,” and say she was “on or near little island at a point near” . . . “then she said something about a storm and that the wind was blowing.”

“Will have to get out of here,” she says at one point. “We can’t stay here long.”

What happened to Earhart after that has vexed the world for nearly 81 years, and TIGHAR is not the only group to try to explain the mystery.

Gillespie is just one member of competing researchers who have dedicated their time and resources to one of aviation’s greatest mysteries.

Mike Campbell, a retired journalist who wrote “Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last,” insists along with others that Earhart and Noonan were captured in the Marshall Islands by the Japanese, who thought they were American spies, and died in Japanese custody after being tortured.

Elgen Long, a Navy combat veteran and an expert on Earhart’s disappearance, wrote a book saying her plane crashed into the Pacific and sank.Gillespie said he believes that evidence supporting his Gardner Island theory is adding up. He believes that the messages sent out over those six days were by Earhart and, occasionally, Noonan. He believes that bones found on Gardner island in 1940 belonged to Earhart, but were misidentified and discarded. He believes that Amelia Earhart died marooned on an island after her plane was sucked into the Pacific Ocean.

But he realizes that the public needs more than his tide tables and extrapolations from data that predates World War II.

“We’re up against a public that wants a smoking gun,” he told The Post on Tuesday. “We know the public wants, demands, something simple. And we’re also very much aware that we live in a time of rampant science denial. Nobody does nuance anymore.”
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/07/...searchers-say/
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Old 25th Jul 2018, 21:18
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Mmm...I just read the same in the Washington Post. The reported radio calls with the aircraft succumbing to waves and tide isn't quite consistent with a wreck in the jungles of ENB...
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Old 26th Jul 2018, 04:40
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OK..she gutsed it on Gardner Is.(?)
Q . Which engine on the Electra do you start to supply power to the radio ??

So the tide comes in..and once the salt water goes through that engine ... thats it ??? if landed wheels up.

If 'wheels down' the engine being higher up and is useable for a few days to continue making calls... then what happens ?? Must have rather huge tides out there, if the other comments apply. You'd hardly sit in the a/c and wait to get washed over...you'd watch from the beach

If any aircraft lands on sand, the first incoming tide washes lose the sand around the wheels and it will sink further, with other tides, be locked in place. Battered by wind and waves over the decades will corrode away almost to nothing. We have seen this with P39s on the coral/sandy flats just off the beaches and inside the reef drop-off , Cape York, because one can compare the pictures take a few days after landing, wheels down, to what you find today..badly corroded wing set and engine sitting on the flat.

Nothing of any metal consequence has been found on Gardiner or just (washed) off the reef flat.

And somewhere in the drink...the first calls as stated sound more logical..."we have taken in water etc as per a slowly sinking aircraft. NO radio calls once afloat on the sea tho, except by battery. How long would those empty tanks have kept the Lockheed afloat ?? Life raft ??
There were many bogus call claims , listeners and publicity seekers..so its hard to know which? what.? who?

Meanwhile in back ENB there is a key to the mystery puzzle....which MUST be proved up.

And I wasnt able to find the' Australian ' article, to see what sort of a job they did. Any leads to ?
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Old 26th Jul 2018, 06:10
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GROOOOANNNN... Tighar seems to be fixated on gardner island " chain" and seem to pile specific- ubique conditions on top of condition to make it sound plausible. Plane lands on beach OK- but then only engine that stays ABOVE water is the ONLY engine that has a generator capable of charging a battery etc ad naseaum ad naseaum. And to date no engines have been found there - they obviously disintegrated completely in salt water ? Riiiight . BTW- some may recognize me from earlier posts. re my suggesting and usibng excel solver to determine IF it was possible based on the few REAL pieces of HARD or reasonably /HARD data available. AS it turns out, I did NOT specifically read Daves excel spread sheeet in any detail until I finished my iteration- solver analysis based on GVW ( AUW) for the real pilots, and a few KNOWN times and locations. A few days ago, I sent Dave some basic solver ' teaching ' items, and then my current 60 line analyis based on a variety of takeoff ( AUW) weights, and about 4 ' gates ' re time and location.

And using solver analyze IAS and zero fuel gates/time and time location of NUK and ontario and " we should be overhead . along with a caefully crafter GPH ' multi curve" v GVW at half hour intervals, I came within a few percent of his overall data. WE did differ on how far fro holwland before they turned back - and different average wind - but with a rang of plausible AUW values at takeofff. I'm not yet ready to publish all the data - since I need to pretty up and make readable the protions of the LAC 487 data sheets I used to generate a close masch to PROBABLE performance.

ALL of which goes to say_ IMHO- and with minimum ' guesses ' as to how and why she PROBABLY elected to go for a PNG-new britan landing area and came up a bit short - she and fred did have enough range with reasonable head and tail winds to CFIT in the area described by Dave.

I have sent most of the data without a lot of neat graphs and analysis to back up my findings- analysis- best guess or whatever you want to call it -

I am now trying to cross check all my work and carefully explain how and why my relative simple method gives REASONABLE - PLAUSIBLE results that do NOT exclude the return to PNG-

Although retired, and a non pilot- I do have other things to do.- Besides which - my presentation obviously needs to be virtually bulletproof- and its l,ate tonight !!

It was only AFTER I sent my data to dave did I sit down and read carefully his paper at https://earhartsearchpng.com/earhart-lockheed-electra-search-project-6/

so my method has matched most of his data/analysis within a few percent but is much easier to let solver find a closer match- given that lac 487 does show an alternate range capability on pages 7 8 and 9 if one carefully reads . .
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Old 26th Jul 2018, 06:41
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Originally Posted by aroa
OK..she gutsed it on Gardner Is.(?)
Q . Which engine on the Electra do you start to supply power to the radio ??
Allegedly the right engine since the left one did not have a generator.
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Old 26th Jul 2018, 09:02
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I am following this with great interest. A swift response to the Washington Post seems appropriate!

I think that one reason why David's hypothesis does not get the interest it deserves is that the explanation is necessarily long and involved, and the people who need to take it on board are neither engineers nor pilots and have short attention spans. .David's logic, narrative, and writing style is excellent, but Mr. Average wants a summary that catches his interest and tells the story in a few sentences, even at the expense of being slightly economical with the truth........

For example - "The facts are that an aircraft thought to the Electra was discovered in the jungle in PNG in 1945, but was ignored in the wartime situation. New research into the flight shows that Earhart had a contingency return-to-base plan if she got lost, and the aircraft was carrying just enough fuel to do that."

You may be able to improve on that, but if you all want to email it to the Washington Post or anyone else, be my guest.
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Old 26th Jul 2018, 10:54
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yup. there are P38s and Harleys buried in crates in PNG too. All ready to go they are.
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Old 26th Jul 2018, 11:34
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The simple solution is find the aircraft in PNG...

It is what it is.

Find it the story closes one book..........
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Old 27th Jul 2018, 01:52
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“The Australian” article on the ENB Story....

I know you have all been waiting with bated breath for the article to be published..... I have it firm now from the journalist that the Project Story will be in the Saturday 4th August edition of the Weekend Magazine. They are still setting it up and next Wednesday a "videographer" will be here at my home to ask me questions in front of a camera and they are going yo link the video into the written story. I will be honest and say that I was worried that they were going to stall for some time on this but it seems they have checked it out and are now very interested and so are going through with it on the 4th August. Sorry to keep you waiting……

Now, to all the overseas people who will have some difficulty as the newspaper is a subscription on the internet..... If you will send me you email addresses (... and I never ever keep emails in an address file)... if you will send me your emails I will send you a scanned copy. I plan to send the actual magazine to those who have donated and that I have addresses for and send scanned copies to those that I have email addresses for... that is the least I can do for those interested. I will delete your emails after the action. My email address is on the website www.earhartsearchpng.com

The recent comments:

1. Yes, Richard Gillespie is regurgitating the supposed radio calls with a new analysis of the calls heard, even those on harmonics. That still does not explain how two doctors can say that the bones found in 1940 on Gardner Island were "Male" the bones and radio calls being "part and parcel" of the whole TIGHAR Deal.....

2. Fox News has a report of papers from Earhart's entry into an air race in 1936 which has a picture of the engine nacelles in great clarity showing the described "Ugly Rivets" which clearly a make the nacelle totally different to Cazalet33's (and anybody else's) supposition that the engine nacelle examined by Keith Nurse was from a B-17.

3. Correct that the right engine and propeller had to be out of the water, meaning that in the forced landing, it also had to be the left main leg which broke.... and as one writer has said, it is more likely that the survivors of such a landing would look forlornly at the aircraft sat there in the tidal water that go out there of five or six successive low tides days to make calls... also, looking at an aerial photo of Gardner island, there are flat areas at the side of the lagoon which would appeal to me more than the tidal flats to make a landing where it would be realised the aircraft is never ever going to leave the island. I could relate more fables from TIGHAR about that landing and the aftermath than there is room on this page.

Regards....
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Old 27th Jul 2018, 03:55
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Never did find those Harleys and a P 38 in a cave with a steel door,(!) locked (!!)near Milne Bay. Drat !
Nor the boxed P 39s up the Cape, similar storage. Bugger !
Alas, the records show what we know..a definitive number of beached and busted P 39s. That's all, folks..
Emi tasol.

Fascinating thing when hunting a/c relics is the number of people who know a cousin who had a mate who new a bloke who saw in 1941. as above...somewhere, but no precise location ie near Iron Range.

Still, the east Cape beaches are really something, and we do have to have one last dig on the inverted P39 of 2nd Lt Robert Love, who was killed in the landing accident. RIP Robert aged 22.
Probably an F model but no serial , manufacturers or tail No .yet found...
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Old 27th Jul 2018, 04:12
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Originally Posted by David Billings
Yes, Richard Gillespie is regurgitating the supposed radio calls with a new analysis of the calls heard, even those on harmonics.
I have a hard time believing that school kids and housewives in the lower 48 would pick up harmonics of a 50 watt 1930's transmitter over 6000 miles away even with gray line DX'ing and a high sunspot number. Supposedly, they were randomly tuning the airwaves on home radios and came across Earhart and Noonan's plaintive appeals for help.

A couple of assessments of Gillespie's efforts from Smithsonian magazine articles:

In his ten trips to Nikumaroro, Gillespie has brought back a rusted pocket knife, bottles, zippers and pieces of a shoe, any of which could have belonged to Earhart and Noonan, but also to the people who lived on the island between 1939 and 1963. Gillespie and Elgen Long have been arguing for decades over the piece of aluminum found there. Long says the piece obviously comes from the wing of a PBY, a U.S. military seaplane. “I think if Ric proved anything, it’s that [Earhart and Noonan] never were close to that island,” says Tom Crouch, senior curator of aeronautics at the National Air and Space Museum. “Otherwise he would have found something definitive. Ric is in the business of taking wealthy people on an archaeological adventure, Indiana Jones-style.”


https://www.smithsonianmag.com/histo...953646/?page=2

But none of this evidence is airtight, and the mystery behind her final resting spot remains unsolved. Many researchers refute all of TIGHAR’s claims. Dorothy Cochrane, curator for general aviation at the National Air and Space Museum, wrote in an e-mail:

“Both myself and Senior curator Dr. Tom Crouch have been debunking [Richard] Gillespie’s theory for more than 25 years. Our stance—that she went down into the Pacific Ocean in the proximity of Howland Island—is based on facts. These facts come from her radio broadcasts enroute to Howland and directly to the US Coast Guard ship Itasca. These facts come from Earhart, Lockheed, USCG files, and respected researchers who compiled the details of her flight and her aircraft. Many others have also rejected Gillespie’s claims. Gillespie’s theory is based on conjecture and circumstance. He repeatedly ignores facts such as the found sole of a woman’s shoe being the wrong size for Earhart—a fact stated by her sister.”


https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart...e-1-180960995/
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Old 27th Jul 2018, 04:53
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So back then before the interweb and television, did everyone have a HF sitting at home, is that what they are trying to lead us to believe?
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Old 27th Jul 2018, 05:39
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Originally Posted by Squawk7700
So back then before the interweb and television, did everyone have a HF sitting at home, is that what they are trying to lead us to believe?
Well in the 40's- I had a crystal radio that at night could pick up an AM radio station KSL salt lake from the san franciso area . ... so obviously one could pick up a high freq bounce form 4 times that distance .....

And I'm sure that most will be amazed that two wasp engines can be totally dissolved in sea water with no traee . ..
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Old 27th Jul 2018, 05:51
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@Squawk7700 - In the 30's, 40's and 50's people used to have home radio sets with Short Wave (SW) bands Medium Wave and also Long Wave. My father had a wooden encased Marconi radio about 2 feet high and one foot six inches wide which had these bands and a "Magic Eye" tuning aid which resembled a large Owl's eye with a black pupil which enlarged or diminished as you tuned into stations hundreds and thousands of miles away. I used to spend time in my school holidays playing with this set. Short Wave bands encompass all the HF Frequencies.

@Air Bubba - That piece of aluminum that Gillespie has been continually hawking as coming from the Electra, since it was found in 1991, has been conclusively proven to have come from a C-47A by the New England Aircraft Museum (NEAM). It matched a spare wing they had at the Museum..... Strange that..... there is a crashed C-47A on SYDNEY Island in the PHOENIX Group of islands, near to Nikumaroro Island as it now is. Back in 2014, I spent time in the evening drawing the fuselage frame placements by the Station Numbers (in inches) in a Drawing Program and proved that the piece of scrap that Gillespie had was "Too Big" to fit between the frames of where the rearmost window had been on the starboard side of the Electra..... A guy in MEL was also doing the same thing.... We had a big time over that on WIX. This eventually caused a heated argument between the person who had proposed the idea and Mr. TIGHAR himself, leading to the eventual resignation of the idea's proposer. Gillespie has not to my knowledge informed his members that the proof of identity was found by the NEAM and the "Magic Scrap" has not been mentioned since.

Regards...
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Old 27th Jul 2018, 08:30
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Good luck with the Australian article - I hope the article reaches people who can be of help in your search. It amazes me that there are still people posting on here who make strong comments but seemingly have not read your website.
And some comments made that are incomprehensible.Whilst The Australian people are mainly concerned about their readers and circulation figures I wonder if they might be of help to you in reaching a wider World distribution somehow.
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Old 27th Jul 2018, 10:52
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@propertee64...

I am told that it will be syndicated.

Rgds.
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Old 27th Jul 2018, 16:48
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Having an opinion is fine. Being rude is unacceptable. A few bundy & cokes with that aggression.

Look forward to 47’s apology......

Keep up the great work guys. The Aussie article should really pique interest, let’s hope someone pics it up.

Whatever happens a mystery will be solved.
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