There’s a lot to admire about Tighar, I say as admittedly a former member and a friend of Ric Gillespie and his wife Pat Thrasher, and nothing to admire about the mean-spirited little people who sit on their broad buttocks, comfy at home, and criticize the enormous efforts of a group of volunteers who have done a huge amount of work trying to solve the Earhart mystery.

(Go to their website–I believe it’s tighar.org–and you’ll learn more about Earhart’s last flight than you–or the critics–ever knew before.)

True, they haven’t solved it yet, after years of work and numerous expeditions, but if it were easy, those Monday-morning quarterbacks so quick to criticize would have solved it themselves.

Tighar very well may never solve it, but if they do, I will enjoy watching the tons of crow being eaten. And I say that as the author of an Air & Space Smithsonian article some years ago confidently predicting that their search was misdirected, that Earhart and Noonan had simply run out of fuel, ditched in the open sea and drowned or died in a raft.

I will be delighted to be proven wrong.

That’s by no means “heavy corrosion” for an airplane that sat for over 60 years in water. In fact the composition of the fresh swamp water actually inhibited what could otherwise have been heavy corrosion.

And as Markb said, all of your questions are amply covered in the nearly 30 years of coverage, available on line, that this airplane has gotten since Tighar first tired to recover it.

thank you, Shorty. I didn’t even realize that apparent YouTube subsidiary existed.

“Banging on about misremembering a name…just gets in the way.”

Oh, absolutely. Ben Ritchie it is. And Kathy Johnson, both of whom worked for Linkhead. Silly me to think that it mattered what a name actually was.

My apologies for getting in your way. Go for it, the runway’s now clear.

Mark, are you saying that the entire package of wreckage could be sold for a good price because it includes the data plate, or that in aviation-archaeology terms the wreck is more significant–regardless of the monetary value–because of the presence of the plate?

Yes, I understand that part of the serial number had already been posted. I’m just saying this information is from somebody who essentially, literally has the dataplate in their hand. Consider it confirmation. (The original serial-number poster, by the way, seemed to be not entirely sure whether his number matched that of the aircraft recovered. Now he knows.)

Using Google, or any good search engine, is so simple that I, a 74-year-old Luddite, find it stunning that anybody can’t do it. You don’t have to know a thing about computers, or how search engines work, you just ask it a question. And the simpler the question is, the better.

For example: Don’t put in “What is the meaning of a moratorium vis-a-vis warbird airplanes?” Although you could do that, it’s just inefficient. “Warbird moratorium” works way better. (As for the poster who points out that the questioner didn’t know that the “moratorium” had anything to do with the FAA, that’s irrelevant. “Warbird moratorium” would work just as well as “FAA warbird moratorium.”)

Try it sometime. Don’t be afraid. You won’t break your computer, you won’t set anything on fire. Faucet leaking? Google “fix a faucet.” Car won’t start? Google “jump a battery.” Can’t get it up? Google “erectile disfunction.”

I’m not trying to be pissy here, I’m just trying to point out that there are far easier ways of getting an instant answer by doing a search rather than posting on a forum. Try it. It won’t hurt you, I promise.

Does nobody know how to do a Google search anymore? “FAA warbird moratorium” will do the job just fine.

Or you can ask somebody else to do it for you, I guess…