Radio and Amelia Earhart

Speaker: John Howard, W2JLH

Abstract: This talk will focus on the role that radio played during Amelia Earhart’s last flight—and how radio may have helped us “find” her.

About our speaker: By training, John is a biologist with over 40 years experience working as a biomedical researcher. His first Master’s degree is in Virology (useful in today’s pandemic). Through his mother, he became interested (some say obsessed) with two historical events on which he has become an expert: first, the Lincoln Assassination (why?- because his great grandmother saw Lincoln’s body in NYC City Hall in 1865), and second, the Lindbergh kidnapping (because his mother listened to the NYC-Paris fight of 1927 on a crystal set).

For the past 10 years, until the pandemic, John led tours of all existing sites related to the escape of Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth through So. Maryland and Va. He has also led discussion groups and tours of sites related to the Lindbergh kidnapping in NJ and the Bronx.

Regarding ham radio, John’s dad wanted to get his ticket around 1964, so he purchased a used Lafayette KT200. They put up a wire antenna and started listening. Because of the sudden death of his father in January, 1965, John, then a teen, never followed through. Then at age 67 he got his license (KD2NRS). He upgraded to General about a year later and got his current call (which includes his initials). He joined FLARC right after his Tech was issued and has been active ever since. The hams who have elmered him (and still do) are Fred W2AAB ( a real cw maven) and Van W2DLT (avid contester). John enjoys DX and contesting and plans to try to master code this year to expand his repertoire. The main limitation to his on air time is that he teaches HS biology and works evenings full time as a Pathologist Assistant and is on call for autopsies at another local hospital (he has assistant at or performed over 1000 post mortems).