Gavin Grimmer
One thing that is mainly overlooked, is Chadwick had what was a “new toy up his sleeve”... An electronic compass otherwise known as an ADF (Auto Direction Finder). (Page 159 in “LOST”) A Piper Autonav Radio Compass.
There appears to be a phenomena in Aviation that when a new device comes on the market
(for instance GPS), some pilots will think it is the “best thing since sliced bread”
and will utilise it to such an extent that they end up taking huge risks and sometimes
killing themselves. One well known example was the Hughes 500 ZK-HNW, and you can
read about that one on my website. I have known of others...
An ADF was all but useless on the West Coast as all you needed to do was follow the coast/mountain ranges, but at well over 6000 ft over Mt Aspiring was a different story. From there there was an unobstructed ‘view’ of Dunedin and Dunedin had what was in fact the first radio station in NZ (02-10-1922)... All Chadwick had to do with his ADF was tune to the frequency and he had a bearing to Dunedin.
Report 34 in “LOST”: Mr Lamp was climbing near Mt Iron at noon and SAW the aircraft heading towards Motatapu Valley...
Mt Aspiring – above cloud, and now below cloud as Mr Lamp could see it!
So here we have Chadwick circling around Mt Aspiring most probably checking for wind
speed and direction – we know he had an ADF on board, and we know he had a strong
signal from the station at Dunedin to get a bearing to.... and a valley to descend
into if he remained on that bearing. An ADF only keeps the nose of the plane heading
towards the station, so if there was a cross wind, it would mean flying what is known
as a parabolic curve... not good if you are descending into a valley, and so this
was why Chadwick would have had to have known the wind speed and direction to make
allowances for this.
Recap....
SEEN below cloud at Jacobs River
HEARD above cloud between
Jacobs River and above Mt Aspiring
SEEN below cloud from Mt Iron
Note in this image the valley directly in line with the direction towards Dunedin:
I also initially thought as per the last update, that if the Dragonfly was seen flying into the Motatapu Valley, then that was where they were likely to be found, but I was at a loss to explain the Cardrona Hotel sighting due to the time reported that Mr Galvin saw it (11:20), but keep in mind his report came in 4 days after the disappearance... So I thought maybe Mr Galvin was confusing the sighting of another plane he saw on a different day?... (Another common witness mistake I have observed)
Watches and clocks in 1962 were of a mechanical ‘wind up a spring’ type and not that accurate. To top that off, remember Mr Galvin and the other witnesses were trying to remember an event at a later time (4 days later), that they had at the time no reason to have to remember it! Hence the time he gave was likely to be very inaccurate - probably just a guess...
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