NavList:

Hewitt,

Not to beat a dead horse, But .........

The second point you made is intresting as we on NavList have discussed time zones and Zulu time.  The problem Earhart had was, as the radio setup in her airplane could not receive and transmit at the same time, she had to set up a schedule when she would talk then throw the switch so she could hear.  She said she would listen on the hour and the half hour and transmit at 15 past and 45 past.  She also said she would use GCT (our Zulu time ).

The Itasca was using a time zone of 11 hours and thirty minutes!  When Earhart was transmiting so was Itasca - that is why much of what was recorded was nonsense.  Once, they heard her say she would listen for a reply on the half hour and the crew on the Itasca woundered why she would wait 45 minutes to hear their answer.  To Earhart  it was only about 5 minutes.

The other point about RDF was, yes, she did not have a good working knowledge of the set but the Itasca's RDF unit could not be tuned to the frequency Earhart was using!  Marx Bro. meet Keastone Cops.  There was one unit that could tune the correct frequency, but was on shore and that crew had run down the batteries during the night well before AE and Fred were even close.

Can't we all just use ZULU

John H.   41N   100 W