Posted on 09/10/2016 4:34:24 PM PDT by Kaslin
She continued to encourage other women to enter the field of aviation, however, and became a member of the Ninety-Nines, an international organization for women pilots which was founded by Earhart and 98 other female aviators.
In 1936, Kalep published the first edition of Air Babies, a children's book that she wrote and illustrated to teach children about flying. The story followed two young planes, Happy Wings and Speedy, and a 1938 reprint included a foreword from Earhart, who embarked on her last flight three days after writing the piece.
Kalep began creating leather artworks which she sold to her neighbors to make a living. She created three-dimensional paintings made out of small pieces of colored leather imported from France. Throughout the 1960's and 70's she showcased her art in exhibitions across the United States and sold works to high-profile customers, including Eugene Ormandy, long time music director and conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
The one I have of Elvy Kalep’s paintings, is a three-dimensional sailboat using the colored leather pieces as described above to create the painting. It is approximately 20 x 30 inches, framed and done on wood instead of canvas.
My parents were acquainted with a woman in California who had several of Kalep’s leather paintings. They got two or three from her, including the one I have. This elderly woman, a Mrs. Day, whom I met once, knew Elvy Kalep. As I recall, Mrs. Day lived in Alhambra. Perhaps she was one of Elvy Kalep’s high-profile customers. I do recall that she was ‘well-to-do’.
Ah, yes, navigating via sextant. Amelia Earhart’s navigator would have been using a sextant. It is an almost forgotten ‘art form’. I learned some years ago to ‘reduce sights’ made using a sextant. And the sextant I learn to use was a Plath, German, and it had a swastika on it, from the early 1930’s German navy. When I was learning, the accuracy required was within a mile.
Today we have navigational accuracy within a few feet via GPS. Most all of us have at least one GPS today, and we have begun to take them fore granted. The accuracy is phenomenal. I use mine as a check on my speed, because it is infinitely more accurate than the speedometer in my car. It is also infinitely more accurate than the odometer.
Each has his own choice as to GPS. My choice is Garman...they supply the military.
Any idea what they used for a chronometer?
One minute of error puts you off about 15 miles.
Radio time checks? Photos do no not show a sextant port? It is unlikely they had a bubble sextant.
There was a hatch on the aircraft, so at 100 kts(?) out in the wind you make your sightings. Take three it will even it out!
Flying 6000 miles over open water and finding a very small island, wow.
“I’m taking that as a reporter having no clue that there was a time before Radar. ...
... what the hell kind of radar in 1937 could track a plane ... in the middle of the central pacific.”
Thanks go to BwanaNdege for correcting my approximation of the timeline of radar development. The Brits in the 1930s were ahead of the entire world in radar, but they didn’t put any systems on islands in the Pacific.
Might as well trim DesertRino’s first comment to “reporter having no clue”. And the media’s lack of cluefulness seems to be on the rise, even as their inclination to actually learn something before multiplying words is on the decline.
The answer to DesertRhino’s final query is, no kind of radar, not even today.
Before radar, air traffic controllers required pilots to report their own positions via radio. After radar coverage was built over First World countries, position reporting was still required over oceans, and over low-tech areas (essentially, the Third World), until GPS began operating.
And that would tell me that by dead reckoning he would recognize if they had overflown or missed and should have started a circular search pattern - unless they had to divert significantly due to weather or had a technical problem in navigation or propulsion equipment.
I wondered about that too. Practical useful radar wasn't available until '41 or '42 at the earliest. I need to refresh my memory.
Who the heck would have radar in the middle of the Pacific at that time?
**Earhart’s plane was last seen on the radar on July 2, 1937.**
Was radar up and running in that area at that time?
There is considerable evidence that she was picked up by the Japanese and held for a few years, until she died in captivity.
Her co-pilot was executed.
For most, their phone is their GPS. Pretty amazing all-in-one devices these days.
And of course there are Garmin apps for smartphones.
First woman to fly solo around the world:
Jerrie Mock 1964
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerrie_Mock
I know her daughter-in-law and her granddaughter.
Mock’s Cessna 180 which she flew around the world, “The Spirit of Columbus,” hangs in the Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air and Space Museum in Virginia.
TIGHAR is a pathetic joke, their number one interest is $$$$$$$$$$$$.
The book Lost Star has a photo of Earhart being sworn in as a Major in the US Army Air Corps Reserves by a General.
Also has some info on her second Electra-—not the one wrecked in Hawaii—such as a pic of it being under armed Army guard and about her stop in Florida to have the plane fitted with Fairchild aerial survey cameras.
Noonan was commissioned as a Lieutenant Commander in the US Navy
Reserves.
That book had some errors but still included stuff I have not seen anywhere
else.
PS, was Musick the captain of the Clipper that vanished?
Scamming investors and have not produced scat.Some of their stories were way out there.
LOL
>> she safety landed on another island, believed to be Nikumaroro, also known as...
Chicken Island.
It didn't improved much in the next 4 years. December 7, 1941.
The Chinese school of navigation says in a proverb:
” Woman who fly upside down have crack up!”
Somebody needs to do some fact checking.
Thanks for the historical info. Good info about Gann, too.
I, too, have climbed above 12,500 for short periods to clear clouds. But, at the time I was living at 6,200 elevation, so I was not pushing things too far.
As for her flight, I was speaking of sustained flight at higher altitudes. I’ve only had altitude sickness once. That was on a mountain at 10,800, after spending the previous year training with the USMC in the western Pacific, mostly at sea level, but including running around lower mountains in Korea with a 115lb pack.
After living at 6,200 ft, we had no trouble strolling up a 14,800 mountain. Once you are acclimated and the body has produced more red blood cells, things are just fine.
“Keep the shiny side up!”
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