September 1, 1:30 pm  Update on the Coast Guard Search and Recovery Mission in Greenland


From HDNet World Report producer Phil Maravilla in Greenland:

The entire team is hanging tough, but the rain has been relentless, and that means the work is going slowly, or almost not at all.

Despite some early ‘hits,’ the plane hasn’t yet been found. After the radar ‘hits’ something, a bore hole is then dropped …  The hit is no guarantee.  After the bore hole is drilled the depth of the hit, a small cylindrical camera is dropped into the hole, which becomes filled entirely with water.  The small cam is outfitted with 20 LED lights on its perimeter.  As it lowers into the hole, the camera records an image that is similar to a colonoscopy.  So far, the camera has shown that none of the bore holes have hit a target.

The science team says all the rain water is bad for sensing anything beneath the ice, because it is dense and registers differently from ice. The rain falls into cracks in the ice, and fills the crevices.  The water throws off the readings that distinguish bedrock.

This morning, Paul Beban went with North South Polar’s Lou Sapienza to explore a ridge where Lou speculates could be a secondary or third-option crash site. If the weather improves, they will head back out today. My guess: today is a wash.

August 31 Update #2 on the Coast Guard Search and Recovery Mission in 
Greenland

From HDNet's Paul Beban and Phil Maravilla:
This afternoon the team has been 'drilling' (actually making 4" bore 
holes with hot water), but have not found the 'anomaly' seen on the 
ground penetrating radar (GPR).  Kate McMullan, the radar imaging lead, 
decided to cast her net a little wider.  She is now searching an area of 
about 1500 feet by 1500 feet with a 50 foot long, 50 megahertz GPR 
antenna nicknamed the 'dragon's tail,'  This GPR has less fine detail 
but can search a wider swath more quickly.  It has been raining all day 
at the site, and the clouds are so thick that the transmission of new 
video has been impossible.  The rain and failure to 'hit' the anomaly 
has dampened spirits somewhat after the initial rush of arrival and the 
quick discovery of the anomaly, but the Coast Guard-led team is still 
very upbeat and optimistic.

A note about Sunday's arrival:  One of the first things that was done is 
the Coast Guard raised two flags: the American flag of course, and the 
black POW / MIA flag.

Welcome to Oaksterdam University - the nation’s 1st and only cannabis trade school. Students come here to learn about growing, cultivating & selling (legally) marijuana. Kind of gives new meaning to a ‘higher’ education. WR will give viewers a front seat in the cannabis classroom, plus a peek inside the Prop 19, Control & Tax Cannabis Initiative, campaign office where Richard Lee and dozens of volunteers hope to make history in Nov.

The crew sets up for our sit-down interview with Richard Lee - the man behind California’s Prop 19, the nation’s first ballot measure to tax & legalize marijuana for recreational use. (and yes, that is a pot plant under the grow light!)

Kusuluk Fjord, where the Coast Guard team, accompanied by a team from HDNet, spent Saturday night before traveling by helicopter to the suspected 1942 crash site of the Coast Guard ‘Duck’ plane.

The search and recovery team believes it has located the Coast Guard J2F-4 Grumman Duck that crashed in 1942.  Ground penetrating radar has found an ‘anomaly’ in the ice at what they believe to be the crash site.  Work last night was suspended due to darkness at 10:00 pm local time, but is proceeding this morning.  More to come soon.

Newly released data shows alarming numbers of our soldiers are taking psychiatric drugs, sometimes in cocktails of ten prescriptions or more. Whistleblowers we talked to say that the military is handing out pills like candy to help stressed combat troops cope, with sometimes catastrophic results.

An HDNet World Report team shooting at a Miami-Dade  Metrorail Station captured a dramatic altercation between a local journalist and a Metrorail security guard – a clash now at the center of the debate over whether citizens can use their cameras in public places, and videotape their own interactions with police.

The blogger, Carlos Miller, says he was exercising First Amendment rights by videotaping at the Metrorail station, when a security guard grabbed his video camera and confiscated it. Miller then recorded the rest of the confrontation using his iPhone. An HDNet World Report camera captured the entire encounter for an upcoming story on First Amendment Rights and taping police.

Iran has long been suspected of meddling in Iraqi affairs, but now they are actually bombing Iraqi territory. Correspondent Willem Marx is near the volatile Iran-Iraq border to investigate reports of civilians being targeted.

We go inside the elite “Task Force Shadow” in Afghanistan. Part of the 101st Airborne, its pilots and medics fly unarmed helicopters into active combat zones to evacuate seriously injured soldiers. World Report goes along with them for a first-hand look at the horror and heroism of war.

Correspondent Greg Dobbs on “The Loneliest Road”

We just came back from the loneliest road in America. That’s not my name for U.S. Highway 50 across Nevada; Life Magazine gave it the name a quarter century ago, and they didn’t mean it as a compliment. It’s about 300 miles of asphalt, with not a thousand people living within sight of it. One example: we came across one lonely mailbox, maybe 20 yards from the loneliest road, yet as far as the eye can see in every single direction there’s nothing—-and no one—- who might need a mailbox.

Cameraman John Goheen and I spent some of our time at a place called “Middlegate Station,” population 17 and about a hundred miles from nowhere. It’s a former Pony Express transfer point which now serves as a motel and restaurant and bar and RV camp. The people who run it love the stunning desolation of the desert and say it’s only lonely along the loneliest road if you don’t look. They both told me they probably make more new friends in a day at Middlegate Station than the average city-dweller makes in a week. They might have a point.

We also came across a couple of characters there. One is known only as Sleeping Bag Billy; don’t ask why. His claim to fame is that while he lives about 300 miles from the nearest ocean, he surfs….by running his Harley down the road, then getting his feet up on the gas tank, then letting go of the handlebars and standing straight up at about 40 mph. And there’s Greg Delposo. After we watched Greg manipulate a monofilament line on a fishing pole into a small lasso, we went out with him onto the desert to see what he’d do with it. The answer?  He goes fishing….for lizards.

But besides a chocolate milkshake made with real ice cream, real syrup, and real milk—- what a concept!—- maybe the best thing about the loneliest road is what it doesn’t have: no drugs, no crime, no rules. Or very little anyway. And besides gas, no chains, which means no chemical milkshakes. I wouldn’t want to live there…but I wouldn’t hesitate to go back.