On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 05:21:51 -0500, Cub Driver
wrote:

On Sat, 08 Jan 2005 22:07:52 -0500, vincent p. norris
wrote:

Yeah, a key must weigh, oh, two or three ounces!

It all adds up, of course. Many serious backpackers cut the handles
off their toothbrushes.

Here is the introduction to what TIGHAR calls "The Hooven Report":

"Before Miss Earhart took off on her Round-the-World flight she
removed from her plane a modern radio compass that had been installed
and replaced it with an older, lighter-weight model of much less
capability. I am the engineer who had invented and developed the radio
compass that was removed, and I discussed its features with Miss
Earhart before the installation was made. I have reason to believe
that it was the failure of her radio direction-finder to do what the
more modern model could have done that caused her to be lost. The
story is told herein, and it is plain to see why I have been so very
much interested in the subject.

"I met Miss Earhart for lunch at Wright Field in the summer of 1936.
She was accompanied by a younger woman flyer, quite unknown at the
time, Jacqueline Cochran. Although she moved in a man's world, and
wore men's trousers and wore a short haircut, there was nothing
masculine about Miss Earhart. Every inch a lady, she was gracious and
quiet-spoken, thoroughly feminine and attractive.

"Too much time has elapsed for me to remember when it was that I
learned that my device was not on the Earhart plane when it was lost,
or even whether it was before or after the takeoff that I learned. But
I have been possessed by the desire to know what did happen, and by
the wish that things had happened differently."

For the full article by Hooven, see
http://www.tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Documents/Hooven_Report/HoovenReport.html.

The gist of his argument is that in the interest of shaving a few
pounds from her DF equipment, AE installed an inferior system
that cost her more in drag than it gained in weight reduction.
Her inability to make the old system work, in turn, made it impossible
for her to find Howland Island on the morning of July 2, 1937.

Marty