Earhart subsequently made her first attempt at competitive air racing in 1929 during the first Santa Monica-to-Cleveland Women's Air Derby (nicknamed the "Powder Puff Derby" by Will Rogers), which left Santa Monica, California, on August 18 and arrived at Cleveland, Ohio on August 26.

The Electra's RDF equipment had failed due to a blown fuse during an earlier leg flying to Darwin; the fuse was replaced.The subsequent report on Gardner read: "Here signs of recent habitation were clearly visible but repeated circling and zooming failed to elicit any answering wave from possible inhabitants and it was finally taken for granted that none were there.

On July 2, 1937 at 10:00 in the morning (midnight GMT), Earhart and Noonan took off from Lae Airfield ( 06°43′59″S 146°59′45″E / 6. The loop antenna was equipped with a tuneable loading coil that changed the effective length of the antenna to allow it to work efficiently at different wavelengths. Note 30] During a test flight at Lae, Earhart could hear radio signals, but she failed to obtain an RDF bearing. She rejected the high school nearest her home when she complained that the chemistry lab was "just like a kitchen sink". bettersourceneeded] [226] [227] [ bettersourceneeded] Gallagher stated that the "Bones look more than four years old to me but there seems to be very slight chance that this may be remains of Amelia Earhart.Manning, having taken a leave of absence to do the flight, felt that there had been too many problems and delays. Earhart had her first lesson on January 3, 1921, at Kinner Field on the west side of Long Beach Boulevard and Tweedy Road, [49] now in the city of South Gate. In 1929, Earhart was among the first aviators to promote commercial air travel through the development of a passenger airline service; along with Charles Lindbergh, she represented Transcontinental Air Transport (TAT, later TWA) alongside Margaret Bartlett Thornton [79] and invested time and money in setting up the first regional shuttle service between New York and Washington, D.