Rod is involved with a group from Rockwell Collins in Iowa who have undertaken the challenge of predicting the location of the wreckage of Earhart's airplane. The search has combined historical studies, radio and propagation knowledge, state-of-the-art computer analysis and aviation principles in order to retrace the flight toward the intended destination of Howland Island. Tiny Howland Island, KH1, is approximately 1.5 by .75 miles, and is located some 1900 miles southwest of Honolulu.

Radio communications -- or less-than-optimum radio communications -- may well have played a significant part in the failure of the mission. Ironically, it may be the analysis of radio signal strengths and HF propagation conditions for the fateful day which provide essential clues to establishing the location of Earhart's plane at various times during the flight of almost 24 hours, including the most likely area where the plane went down.

In April, a $3,000,000 expedition will proceed to the area in question to carry out an undersea search, using sonar to pinpoint likely targets for future exploration. This will be a very systematic and detailed sweep of the area.

In May or June, Rod Blocksome will be aboard a follow-up expedition which will be equipped with undersea cameras to actually look at the objects located by sonar a few weeks earlier. The group of people involved are those who successfully located the Mercury capsule of Gus Grissom, Liberty Bell 7, fairly recently. That capsule is presently being restored by the Kansas Cosmosphere.

Below you'll find the text of the article on this from the March 3, 2000 Kansas State Collegian. The story is by Nancy Foster, with a photo by Kelly Glasscock.

President Blessing was misquoted, and there is an amusing reference to Amelia's Morse code key not being "compatible" with the ship Itasca. (What was that again)? By and large, however, it's a good article.

Look here for the official Amelia Earhart web site.

The crash of Amelia Earhart's plane saddened the country in the 1930s as much as President Kennedy's assassination did in the 1960s, said a member of a group planning to search for her missing plane.

"It was that big of an event," Rod Blocksome, K-State graduate, said.Blocksome gave a presentation Thursday night in Rathbone Hall on the life and last flight of Earhart, who set out in 1937 to be the first female pilot to circumnavigate the world near the equator. The speech was sponsored by the KSU Amateur Radio Club.

An analysis of the radio communications and navigation aspects of her last flight, and the events that lead up to it were discussed. Blocksome, along with a group of engineers from Rockwell Collins, has spent the past year and a half conducting a detailed investigation of Earhart's disappearance.

In order to fully understand and research the flight, he said the team of investigators created a computerized model of the aircraft and the communication devices used, such as antennas.

They discovered that several communication devices were not able to be used, he said. The antenna on the bottom of the plane was unable to transmit after being damaged during a bad take off.

Another antenna and various devices were removed to reduce weight from the rear of the plane, and the Morse code keys were not compatible with that of the naval ship Itasca, with which they were communicating.

"There's a lot of flaky stuff that happened in retrospect," he said. "But if it would've been a successful flight, nobody would have paid attention to it."

The computerized version imitated the natural and man-made noise, the amount of power the antennas could transport and the signal strength.

"Then we set up a test," Blocksome said. "We had a girl with a voice similar to Amelia Earhart's record tapes."

Using the tapes, they reenacted Earhart and her communication with the ship at sea. They were able to predict the distance of her plane by eliminating atmospheric and man-made noise.

"A lot of things went into this," he said.

Earhart's plane lost communication with the ship, causing her and her navigator to rely on finding their planned route by calculating distance using the moon and stars.

"They didn't receive the signal they were suppose to, so they turned too quickly and got off route," he said. "They were off course considerably to the north."

While searching for their destination, the plane ran out of gas. The plane fell into the Pacific Ocean and, along with the bodies, has never been found.

"When you look at the whole thing - the aircraft performance, the fuel, the distance - they were really on the cutting edge," Blocksome said.

He and his researchers have planned an expedition for early April in an attempt to find any remains of the plane, and another in May using a wide sonar.

John Blessing, president of the radio club, said he was impressed with how they could determine the plane's approximate distance and how they could go back and use the flight logs for research.

"Back in the day, that would've been a complication," Blessing said. "It's amazing how they can reverse engineering."