The radio had a power of only 50 watts. Amelia was not satisfied, and she tried to borrow a better, more powerful, system. The radio was the weakest link in the laboratory chain.
For weeks she flew the Electra up and down the California coast, working out the “bugs.” In August she went to New York to enter the Bendix Trophy race. The coast-to-coast speed flight, she felt, would be an excellent “shakedown” for the plane.
Other women joined in for the race and gathered at Floyd Bennett Field. Louise Thaden, Blanche Noyes, Jacqueline Cochran, Laura Ingalls, Martie Bowman, Mrs. Benny Howard: all were stiff competitors. Helen Rickey had agreed to be AE’s copilot.
During the race trouble developed in the Electra’s fuel lines, and Amelia had to drop out much against her will. But two women did win the race: Louise Thaden with Blanche Noyes as her copilot.
Preparations moved along for the world flight. Clarence S. Williams of Los Angeles was engaged to get ready maps and charts. He laid out compass courses, the distances between points, the exact times at which to change headings: he prepared sectional after sectional for the many legs of the flight. His work was invaluable.
Paul Mantz was technical adviser, as he had been for the Hawaii-California flight. He supervised the mechanical readiness of the plane, and took it up on many test flights.
GP managed the far-flung problems, and they were many, of stopping places and alternates for the caching of fuel, oil, spare parts. Red tape of international length had to be cut and unsnarled. Innumerable credentials were needed: permissions to land from foreign governments, passports, visas, certificates of health and character, negative police records, medical papers. George made all the official advance arrangements. Before he was finished, he had spotted fuel and oil at thirty different locations along the route, and had collected several thick folders of papers for his wife.
Amelia made more and more notes on her charts as new information poured in. Airports, alternates, emergency landing fields, winds aloft, weather, terrain, altitudes: each had to be entered at the proper place. She took the maps and carefully marked the stop-off points, then drew lines to a double row for entering the exact amount of gas and oil that would be available along the way.
In preparing for previous flights she had revealed her plans only to closest friends, but this time Amelia did not shroud her activities in secrecy. The press received broad clues, and then were blamed, half-jokingly, as the cause of it all. Late in 1936 AE said to reporters in Los Angeles, “I’m nearly sold on the idea of flying around the world because I’d like to do it; but I’m a busy person this year. I have a lot of other things to do. Next year? Well, one never knows.”
On February 11, 1937, Amelia had flown to New York from California. Newsmen had surrounded her at the Hotel Barclay; they wanted a confirmation or denial of all the rumors they had heard about her plans for a world flight. With AE was the man who had agreed to be her navigator. He was Captain Harry Manning, her old friend from the Friendship days, on whose ship, the President Roosevelt, she had returned home.