P-MAN VI Update #31
Thursday, February 19, 2004

Today was an odd mix of stuff. We visited a woman at an office in town who had decided since we last saw her (yesterday, I think) that she wasn't quite ready to be interviewed. We checked with the man who knows about a site north of Arakabesan and was going to take us there either today or tomorrow. Now it's to be on Saturday. Pat and Joe finally interviewed Roddy and his brother, and are now sufficiently convinced about the lighthouse-plane-with-bones-in-it story to be willing to go to the lighthouse again tomorrow (this will be the third visit to the lighthouse this trip for Pat, Pete, and me, and the first ever for Flip and Dan.

I visited the office of the Palau Automated Land and Resource Information System (PALARIS), where Nobuko Murai and Michael Aulerio coached me in the use of a mapping software application that we've been trying to match up with our rapidly growing list of GPS coordinates. It was a super-helpful session. They also provided the current version of their databases that include a huge number of map overlays showing various natural and cultural features.

Pat and Joe returned to the Airai FM2 site and secured it by filling in the small holes that we'd dug near the base of the sticking-out-of-the-ground wing and the front of the engine. The site is now pretty much back to the configuration as we first found it - which appeared to be about 60 years after the most recent previous visit by anyone else. We'll continue to plead for database assistance from those who are in charge of the databases, and will also continue to pursue other archival sources to try to identify this aircraft and determine the fate of its pilot.

Onward and Upward! Strength through Joy!

- Reid