On January 26, Deep Sea Vision (DSV), based in South Carolina, announced that it had captured a sonar image in the Pacific Ocean that “appears to be Earhart’s Lockheed 10-E Electra.”

The DSV team used radio messages received by the Coast Guard cutter Itasca to narrow the search area. The Itasca was on station at Howland Island to assist Earhart with refueling. In preparation of Earhart’s arrival, a runway had been carved into the coral, and barrels of fuel awaited the famous aviatrix.

Howland Island is an uninhabited, cucumber-shaped coral landmass located roughly halfway between Australia and Hawaii. The island measures less than 1 square mile and is part of the Phoenix Island chain.

The DSV expedition was led by Tony Romeo, a pilot and former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer. According to The Wall Street Journal, Romeo sold his real estate company in 2022 to start the ocean exploration business. In September 2023 the 16-person crew launched on the expedition from Tarawa, Kiribati, a port near Howland Island in the central Pacific.

The search continued until December, with the DSV group surveying more than 5,200 square miles of ocean floor using a sophisticated underwater drone. One of the images captured appears to show something that has the same dimensions as Earhart’s aircraft.

The image, swamping the media, shows a fuzzy gold object on a dark background and looks a little like an giant anchor, with a vertical line longer than the horizontal, slightly swept back lines that may be the wings, or an airplane as viewed from above if its nose was pointed to the bottom of the image.

Through multiple channels, Romeo has expressed cautious optimism that this is Earhart’s airplane, but skeptics want more proof—such as the registration number, NR1620.

• READ MORE: Amelia Earhart’s Legacy Enshrined in New Museum

FLYING reached out to DSV but had not received a reply by press time.

At the time of their disappearance, Earhart and Noonan had covered more than 75 percent of the around-the-world distance. The leg between New Guinea and Howland Island was a navigational challenge. Noonan was relying on celestial navigation, which requires noting the position of stars and the sun at a particular time on a particular date. It has been suggested that as the aircraft had crossed the International Date Line, the data Noonan was using was slightly off, putting the aircraft off course.

At 7:42 a.m.on July 2, 1937, Earhart transmitted, “We must be on you but cannot see you… but gas is running low.” The aircraft had been flying for more than 17 hours.

At 7:58 Earhart asked the Itasca to send signals so that she could take a bearing using the Electra’s radio direction finder, and the radio operators aboard the cutter complied, but they could not get a fix on the airplane. There were no more transmissions.

• READ MORE: Technicalities: Amelia Earhart’s Final Flight

This is not the first time someone has thought they found Earhart’s aircraft, and aviation historians are paying attention. No one wants to get their hopes up, but you have to keep an open mind.

“The image is intriguing, offering a variety of possibilities,” said Dorothy Cochrane, curator of the aeronautics department at the Smithsonian Institute’s National Air and Space Museum. “It’s a sonar image of something on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean that should be further investigated. I believe DSV will do so.”

Cochrane noted that it is a positive sign that the image was captured within 100 miles of Howland Island since, based on the strength of the radio transmissions that day, the Coast Guard determined that Earhart was probably nearby but could not hear its replies. In an effort to help them find the island, the cutter poured smoke from its stack. Unfortunately, the atmospheric conditions were such that the smoke did not rise very far but rather settled onto the water, resulting in a haze.

Ironically, at the last stop in New Guinea, Earhart made the decision to leave a trailing wire antenna behind to save weight. The antenna, designed to boost radio reception and measuring approximately 25 feet in length, was deployed behind the airplane on a winch.

The Big Search

When it was determined Earhart’s aircraft was missing, the U.S. Navy launched a massive aerial search that lasted several weeks. The aircraft carrier USS Lexington was deployed to the area. According to a 1937 issue of Time magazine, the week after Earhart’s disappearance, 60 of the carrier’s 62 airplanes searched at a cost of $250,000 a day. The actual number was later reduced to 42. Some historians note that had Earhart not been close personal friends with first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the search might have been called off much sooner.

No wreckage was found—with not even an oil slick spotted.

In 1939 George Putnam, Earhart’s husband, had her legally declared dead.

The Theories

Over the years, there have been many theories about what happened to Earhart and Noonan. The most common theory is that the aircraft ran out of fuel and Earhart ditched in the ocean, or they crashed on a coral atoll and succumbed to thirst and hunger. The most outlandish theories are that they were abducted by aliens, captured by the Japanese and executed for allegedly being spies, or were held in a prison camp during the war then quietly brought back to the U.S. to live under new identities.

Over the decades, the Earhart family has heard the theories, and like many, are skeptical, waiting for positive proof. They aren’t the only ones.

• READ MORE: History Channel’s Amelia Earhart Story Quickly Unravels

“I consider this one of the great mysteries of the 20th century, extending now into the 21st,” said Cochrane. “Not only would the resolution solve the mystery, but it would also allow Earhart to be remembered for her pioneering aviation career and overall commitment to aviation and to women.”

What Do You Think Happened?

According to Mindi Love Pendergraft, Executive Director of the Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum in Atchison, Kansas, museum guests have been asking about Earhart’s disappearance since the story broke about DSV’s discovery.

“It  has been a natural segue into our exhibit about her disappearance and the numerous theories that have been proposed. We do ask our visitors to vote on which theory they believe to be most probable and as of today, 42 percent selected the option that the plane crashed and sank.”

The post Ocean Exploration Company Thinks It Found Earhart’s Airplane appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

That’s how it is supposed to go—and often it does go that well, provided you do your homework before you launch for the big event.

If this is your first flight to a given airshow or fly-in, look for a pilot who has made the trip before and is willing to share information. You might even find someone who will make the flight with you.

Pick the route that works best for your aircraft, keeping in mind performance, especially when it comes to climbing over any high terrain on the way. A turbocharged Cessna T182 might not have any trouble, but the pilot of the vintage Taylorcraft might take a longer route that keeps the airplane over lower terrain.

Consider using supplemental oxygen. Though the regs say that the minimum flight crew needs to be on supplemental oxygen at 12,500 feet after 30 minutes, most pilots begin to experience hypoxia at much lower altitudes—sometimes as low as 6,000 feet—so be prepared.

Know how to calculate performance and use the avionics you’re flying with. You don’t want to be the pilot randomly pushing buttons to update a flight plan while hurtling through the air.

Be conservative about weight and balance as well as performance. While it is tempting to overload your aircraft by ‘just a little’ with all the gear you want for camping, it can come back to bite you. Remember, the OEM determined the calculations in the POH using a new airplane and a test pilot at the controls.

Have at least two methods for updating your preflight briefing in the air—a tablet and com radio, for example—and always carry a backup handheld radio. If you’ve never used a payphone (these people walk among us—payphone operation is now part of my curriculum), learn how to use it. There are places that lack cell service but still have a payphone on location, believe it or not.

Pack water and snacks for the trip, and be wary of dehydration and hunger as they make you sleepy. Drink some water before the approach to landing, as water wakes you up—and an alert pilot is a better pilot.

Plan each leg of the flight meticulously. Be careful that get-there-itis does not cloud your judgment. Build in extra days, and ID places to divert to on each leg.

Make sure you are night current and proficient before you begin the journey. There are times when a pilot finds themselves playing “beat the clock” in an aircraft not certified for night flight because the last flight segment went longer than they anticipated.

For navigation, use a combination of digital and analog methods—if the digital goes tango uniform, the paper could save your trip. Make sure both paper and digital materials are current. You do not want to fly with a sectional years out of date and enter Class D airspace thinking it’s a Class E airport—only to learn the airport now has a tower.

Be conservative about fuel burn. Make a list of all the airports that have fuel, located along your route and within 20 miles off to each side, just in case.

If you are flying with a copilot or a companion, have a discussion about cockpit duties before you leave the ground. With a copilot, make sure to designate who is the ‘pilot flying’ and who is the pilot monitoring and fielding radio calls and programming avionics.

If they are not a pilot, you can still assign them the task of watching for traffic and dialing in frequencies on the com side.

Airshow NOTAMs

By regulation, specifically FAR 91.103: “Each pilot in command shall, before beginning a flight, become familiar with all available information concerning that flight.” This means the pilot needs to know what weather to expect, be familiar with the forecasts, fuel requirements, aircraft takeoff and landing data, weight and balance, alternatives available if the planned flight cannot be completed, and any known traffic delays of which the pilot in command has been advised by ATC. If your intended destination is an airshow or fly-in, this regulation is now on steroids—expect to find a multi- page notice to air missions (NOTAM) released several days before the event.

The larger the fly-in, the larger the NOTAM. Pay special attention to the communication procedures. If the airport is non-towered, it is likely that a temporary control tower will be brought in for the event. The procedures are created to lessen frequency congestion.

Instead of having hundreds of pilots all talking at once, it’s often one radio call made over a specific landmark to establish contact. Rock your wings when recognized, then follow instructions for landing.

Most NOTAMs have traffic pattern diagrams imposed on Google Earth images for illustration—it’s easy to see where you should be and where you need to avoid when you have an image to refer to.

Pilots who have flown into airshows before—like Sun ’n Fun Aerospace Expo and EAA AirVenture—recommend having a hard copy of the NOTAM with you in the cockpit along with any digital presentation. Paper doesn’t run out of batteries.

Even if you have flown into this particular event before, still study the NOTAM, as they are often adjusted year to year—for example, traffic patterns may be altered to move aircraft away from heavily populated parking areas.

Skills for the Airshow Arrival

Brush up on specialty takeoffs and landings, crosswind approaches, and go-arounds before you head out on the great adventure. You do not want to be rusty flying into an airshow.

There is a maneuver you were probably not taught as a student pilot but you need it to establish communication and many of these events—that is rocking the wings of the aircraft.

It sounds simple enough, but the controllers who ask the airplanes to identify themselves by rocking their wings really want to see you rock those wings. Make that airplane thrash around like a 10-year-old who has had a frog put down their shirt—but don’t stall or roll inverted.

Practice approaches, especially short approaches and precision landing technique, because “land on the green dot” means land on the green dot.

Study the airport diagram for the facility and know where you will be expected to park. Usually, airshows have ground marshalers, often people on scooters wearing safety vests with FOLLOW ME on the back.

Remember to watch your wingtips as you taxi, especially when there are lots of people around. Though there may be designated pathways for pe- destrians, some people drift outside of their lanes. You don’t want to be the pilot of the Cessna 172 who hits someone in the back of the head with your wing while you taxi, or the guy in the Beechcraft Baron who decides to ignore the ground handlers and taxi into the grass—putting the nosewheel into a gopher hole, resulting in two propeller strikes.

And, in the end, if you are delayed getting to the event, learn from the experience—and realize that it will make a better story to be told around the campfire.

The post A Fond Memory: Sun ‘n Fun Aerospace Expo 2023 appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

According to the Atchison Amelia Earhart Foundation, the state-of-the-art museum located in Earhart’s birthplace, will be the first to combine STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) and the history of the trail-blazing aviatrix.

History and STEM

Among the exhibits on display will be a Lockheed Electra 10-E, the same model of aircraft Earhart was flying on her last flight. According to museum officials, the aircraft, named Muriel, after Earhart’s sister, is the last remaining Lockheed 10-E.

• Other exhibits include a full-scale replica of the cockpit of Muriel so that visitors can enter to get a better idea of what it was like to be inside the aircraft described as Earhart’s flying laboratory.
• Interactive exhibits demonstrating advances in engineering since the 1930s.
• 3-D aircraft holograms tracing technological innovations in aviation.
• An exhibit, “Above the Clouds,” which invites visitors to explore celestial navigation, radio waves, and atmospheric conditions.
• A virtual reality opportunity to fly Earhart’s Lockheed Vega 5B on the 1932 transatlantic flight.

Earhart the Scientist

Although Earhart, born in 1897, is best remembered as an aviator, she also had a keen interest in science. According to biographies of Earhart, chemistry was one of her favorite subjects in school, and when she looked at colleges she insisted on visiting their science departments. She had a life-long interest in learning, as she studied to be a nurse during World War I and took a course on engine repair when a sinus condition took her out of the air for a few months.

Earhart the Pilot

Earhart took her first airplane flight in 1920 at age 23, and quickly decided flying was something she wanted to pursue. She earned her pilot certificate in 1921 and was soon setting aviation records, including in 1932 being the first woman to fly across the Atlantic solo. 

In 1935 she became the first person to make solo flights from Hawaii to California, and from Mexico City to Newark. That same year she joined the faculty at Purdue University as a technical adviser to the department of aeronautics. During her time at Purdue, she developed the idea of the around-the-world flight and using the Lockheed as a flying laboratory. Although she never returned from her final flight, she became a symbol of courage and innovation—so much so that in the 1990s, Apple Computer used her likeness in their Think Differently campaign.

Museum Designed for Education

Museum officials note that the Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum is designed in partnership with Dimensional Innovations (DI), an award-winning, Kansas-based experience design firm, and each exhibit is carefully outfitted to meet National Curriculum Standards, Kansas Curriculum Content Standards and Missouri Standards of Learning. In addition, professionally developed teacher guides are available. 

The post New Earhart Museum to Open this Spring appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

And for almost as long as she’s been a household name, the celebration of her legacy has originated in the small northeastern Kansas town of Atchison, Earhart’s birthplace. Presently, the town of 10,000 boasts the Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum (owned and operated by The Ninety-Nines International Organization of Women Pilots, of whom Earhart was a founding member and first president), and the annually-held Amelia Earhart Festival, in addition to a widely accepted naming tradition around town to the famed pilot. But a new homage to the widely known aviator in her hometown is set to officially debut in 2023. 

Allison Balderrama, director of the Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum, explains how the exhibition site first came about and its purpose. “Our museum was first conceptualized in 2016 and the centerpiece of the museum is Muriel, a 1935 Lockheed Electra 10-E. We acquired that plane in 2016. So, when that plane came into the museum’s possession, when we purchased it, that was sort of the beginning of our whole story. Ever since then, we have been working to build up a museum around the airplane.” 

One of 14 ever built, the centerpiece aircraft is special in that regard alone. But Balderrama notes that the aircraft’s importance isn’t limited to this distinction. “Our Lockheed Electra is the last remaining plane that is identical to Amelia’s Lockheed 10-E, the plane that she disappeared with on her around the world flight. Our organization was aware that this plane existed and was the last one, so when it went out for sale, we were very interested in purchasing it.” 

While certainly one of the more eye-catching aspects of the museum’s planned footprint, the aircraft isn’t the only facet expected to draw visitors in and teach them about aviation.

Balderrama explains, “The museum was conceptualized as a hybrid history and science museum. So, all of the exhibits we worked on with Dimensional Innovations, who is our design and build firm, are really focused on both Amelia’s history and interactive STEM components. We have a lot of interactive things that teach you about airplanes and how airplanes work, as well as the science behind things that Amelia Earhart did and things like that. I think that every person that comes to the museum will learn something new.”

• READ MORE: Wendover Airfield Museum a Treasure Trove of History

Inside the Museum

An in-depth walk through, or rather “fly through,” of the museum’s anticipated layout can be seen here. 

Some planned exhibits, which were professionally designed to be highly engaging for all ages, set to surround the static “flight-worthy” twin include:

• Careers in Aviation 
  • Amelia’s quote, “The most effective way to do it, is to do it,”- is prominently displayed in this exhibit and is an inspirational tip to visitors.
• Skybreakers: The History of Flight 
• Aircraft and Feminine Feats 

Aside from being an all-encompassing look at Earhart’s life and legacy, perhaps what is most unique about the museum is the fact that it’s a true fly-in and fly-out space. The site is accommodating to those wanting a quick peek during a fuel stop, as well as those looking to go out of their way to learn more about aviation history.

• READ MORE: Amelia Earhart’s Final Flight

“We are in a really unique position where our museum is located in the same building as the airport terminal here in Atchison. It’s the Amelia Earhart Airport (K59), as well. And that’s just a cool opportunity for pilots to fly in, not only to see this unique aircraft but also to experience the museum. When we have pilots fly in, even now before the museum is open, they talk about how they will fly to another airport just to grab a hamburger or to grab an ice cream. So having this huge museum and being able to come and see it by flying will be really special for them.” 

Angie Cairo, K59’s operations manager, further elaborates on how the museum co-occupies some space at the airport, in addition to having its own hangar footprint. “The foundation felt that since we had taken possession of her sister plane that the perfect home for it was the airport. So, they approached the City of Atchison with the plan for the shared building. We share space as far as the conference room, bathrooms and kitchen. We work together on different projects that promote the airport and the museum and share all of the [terminal] building for those events.”

Even with construction of the museum’s exhibits ongoing for quite a while, Cairo additionally notes that the future popularity for the site quickly became apparent. 

“The museum is already attracting visitors. We coordinate together so that they are open during the airport’s annual events. There are so many Amelia Earhart fans throughout the world and this museum with its interactive displays and the duplicated voice of Amelia, are a must-see I believe. Plus, Muriel gives a true perspective of the plane Amelia was flying.”

Balderrama adds that while the museum is currently in its construction phase, with exhibits being installed, its completion is expected soon. A grand opening for the Amelia Earhart Museum is set for 2023. 

The post Museum Celebrates the Life of Amelia Earhart appeared first on FLYING Magazine.