veritasium

Amelia Earhart video - exclusive bonus content

Added 2024-11-26 14:16:52 +0000 UTC

Here's an extended cut of the loop direction finding demo!

We also wanted to point out the insightful comment made by Thomas Biersack on the WIP of our Earhart video. Radio navigation was very difficult back then! Especially for planes.

This demo makes it look fairly easy to navigate but notice how often Derek had to stop and find the null- you can't do that in a plane! Even when you found the null, you would have to either adjust your bearing immediately (and perfectly) or constantly swing the loop to point to the null as your plane moved.

Earhart would have to do this while flying the plane (or at least somewhat paying attention to the auto-pilot) and battling the roar of the engine (which was described as truly punishing).

Measuring air speed was done usually by estimating- either the clouds, whitecaps on the sea, or by tossing a smoke bomb out the window and seeing it move.

Not exactly precise!Celestial navigation was pretty good- but weather could ruin that option completely. As Thomas said- even if you did everything perfectly, it was no easy task.

-Team Veritasium