If dyslexic, then how did he get through RAF flight school let alone get himself placed in command of a passenger liner? Besides, the pilot is fully occupied handling the plane—especially when near the vicinity of an airfield or other controlled airspace and usually the navigator or someone other than the pilot is going to be tapping out the radio dispatches.

Radar transceivers, although commonplace in military acft by 1947 had still not been adopted for use in civilian airliners and the only nav instruments aboard the Star Dust would have been the bubble sextant and international time signal (flatly unusable under the prevailing meteorology), a radio direction finder loop (RDF) or “bird dog”, a radio range receiver (for use with the then widespread “AN-system” radio range stations) and of course, as the article states, the practice of dead reckoning in conjunction with the cockpit panel instruments, airspeed indicator, altimeter, gyro and mag compass and possibly but not necessarily a radio-altimeter. To further murk things up, the captain most likely had to throttle back to not much above stalling speed since that is always highly advised when flying through severe turbulence to avoid undue structural
stresses on the plane. So their true airspeed could have been perhaps as low as 170-180 knots or even less placing them more at the mercy of cross winds.

They were immersed in heavy weather obviating all chance of visual ground reference and according to the description, there were no radio beacons or radio range stations anywhere to be found in the Andes in those days. So the best they would have had by way of knowledge of their position would be a radio azimuth or bearing to Santiago but no certain knowledge of their distance from it. Also it doesn’t seem reasonable that they would have radioed Santiago field and sent a most assured and definitive “ETA four minutes” and then suddenly discovered they were 100 km off course to the North. Radio operators skilled in CW (Morse) instinctively learn to almost immediately recognize each other’s code “signatures” so that if the sender aboard the ship had sent “VALP” instead of “STENDEC”, the Santiago field op would not have mistaken the two words…. especially after three times.

Still very much a tragic mystery.

Quote :
“Once again, STENDEC reads / . . . / – / . / – . / – . . / . / – . – ./. The actual message probably ended with / – - . /. The wireless operator in Santiago must have assumed that the last letter was C, and added a dot after the first dash: / – . – . /. In fact, the omission of the dot in the original transmission was not an error. The letter was not C. Nor were the first two letters of this strange message ST: / . . . / – /. The dots and dash formed one letter, V: / . . . – /.
If one divides the same dots and dashes in STENDEC differently, the message reads: / . . . – / . – / . – . . / . – - . /, which is VALP, the call sign for the airport at Valparaiso, some 110 kilometers north of Santiago. The experienced crew of the “Stardust” apparently realized the plane was off course in a northerly direction (it was found eighty kilometers off its flight path), or they purposely departed from the charted route to avoid bad weather. In either case, they attempted to contact what they thought was the nearest airport, Valparaiso, not Santiago.”

http://www.ntskeptics.org/2010/2010december/december2010.pdf

Mild hypoxia can also produce euphoria (as well as spatial disorientation) and this could explain the absence of a Pan-Pan or Mayday radio broadcast.

VA7DU (ex N0FET)

END = End of text – END (The whole word) has a distinct unmistakable sound and in Morse you don’t
copy the letters, you copy the word. These were professional radio operators at both ends and they hear words, not letters. The word “End” actually has a very pleasing rythmic sound in Morse.

AR = Morse for end of transmission (signing off) always sent with no spacing between A and R. So commonly used that it would not have been mistaken. This is a word in Morse, not letters.

N3ET