[Milsurplus] Trans Oceanic MW receptio

[aGEnuine ham]

Breck and Hue:

Let's be realistic here.  AE and radios were a pretty volatile mix. 
Aural null could have been, well, ever so slightly outside her area of
expertise.

Also, let me make a minor correction in my earlier post.  Strike the
parenthetical reference to 3 MHz in the gray line discussion.  MW
broadcast would have been affected just as much or more than 3 MHz.  

Now, I personally have difficulty understanding the actual local time and
sun position in regard to the sequence of events that day.  There are
half - hour time zones in that part of the world, apparently NO ONE
regularly used GMT (now Coordinated Universal Time, or Z for the
milsurplus gang), or if they did it was translated to "local" for the
unwashed and sometimes incorrectly done, AE may or may not have been
using Lae time (half hour split according to one reference), the ships
may or may not have used Hawaii or Howland Island time, the CG and Navy
used different time references, so the sun position re: Howland Island,
or the Itasca, or the aircraft during the final transmissions is as clear
as mud to me.  I do acknowledge that at the time of expected landing at
Howland, it was well past sunrise in Honolulu.  But if the KGMB reception
was earlier than the 10 AM specified, then the gray line may well have
bracketed Hono. and the aircraft, wherever it was.  Could someone with
one of the computer gray line programs plug July 2, 1937 into it, crank
around to the Western Pacific, and determine the timing (in Z, please) of
the gray line passage vis a vis Oahu and Howland, and then Oahu and
Gardner for us? Shouldn't be a lot different.  I have seen two event
sequence presentations of the July 2 events in two different
publications, and there is so much disagreement, I don't believe either. 
It may well have been long enough after sunrise in the area that this
whole gray line discussion is moot, but I can't prove that based on any
of the books I have read, or documentaries I have viewed.  Dawn is always
mentioned, but somehow the exact relationship of actual local sunrise to
the radio transmissions and reported reception is never really made
clear, or if it is, I sure didn't understand it.  

73,
George
W5VPQ

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