If anyone is curious here’s a fairly exhaustive description of the radio situation for this flight:
Comment on Triangle
Cort@lemmy.world 1 day ago
They were listening on the frequencies she told them to listen on. How could they have known she didn’t know which antenna to broadcast on?
UnspecificGravity@piefed.social 1 day ago
merc@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
To put things in context, this is what they used for communication between a tank and its commanders in WWI:
A tank with a pigeon being released from a hatch.
When the Titanic sunk in 1912, they had a telegraph on board, but no voice radio.
In the 1920s radio took off as a one-way broadcaster to receiver technology, but it still was only rarely used as two-way communications. That only really started for communications between ships in WWII.
So, although she didn’t know how to use the radio in her plane, it was mostly because radio communication was a brand new thing. I’m sure what they put in her plane wasn’t some off-the-shelf radio that had standard switches, antennas and parts. It was probably cobbled together from various parts and only the truly tech-oriented people understood it.
jafra@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
Doesn’t matter why she wasn’t able to handle her communication tec, she did not die because of male ignorance. If anything it was her ignorance for not learning how to use her equipment
axh@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Her radio wasn’t off-the-shelf hardware. But I bet that her plane wasn’t either. What she tried to do required much more effort and knowledge than just operating off-the-shelf tools.
What I am trying to say is that she wasn’t stupid, she was just not prepared enough for the task.
merc@sh.itjust.works 13 hours ago
Her plane may not have been off-the-shelf, but I’m sure she was heavily involved in any modification to it. She was a pilot, that was her concern.
She probably didn’t consider herself a radio operator, and didn’t realize how critical it was to fully understand the radio gear.
My guess is that at that point in time, being a radio operator would be like someone who knew something like 3d printing in great detail today. It was a niche skill that involved a lot of obscure knowledge. If someone doesn’t know something like 3d printing, someone can set it all up for them and then say “ok, when you’re ready, hit this button, when you’re done, do this” and they can use it. I assume that’s what happened with the radio setup. Someone with expertise set it up, and it might have worked, but she didn’t know enough to troubleshoot it when it went wrong.