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"...Financed completely with private funds..." Yes, there have been some interested individuals supporting TIGHAR with monetary and technical support and I wish them the best. For the general public, the most interesting historical aviation persons by far are the Wright Brothers, Lindberg and Earhart... Unfortunately, the Trailing Wire Antenna was left off in the re-build following the ground loop accident in Hawaii. Fred Noonan was a leading Celestial Navigator for Pan-Am, but always had Radio Operators to do the RDF work for the 'Final Approaches' and he and Earhart took the need for Radio Direction Finding far too lightly. They were unable to get a 'Null' (Direction) on a test flight prior to leaving New Guinea and attributed that to being too close to the station... when the true reason was that they were using too high a frequency for Direction Finding. Film from their final take off from New Guinea shows the lower (receiving) antenna mast and then its wire being torn off. There was an anecdotal report of finding a wire later on that turf runway. The Coast Guard at Howland Island clearly heard Amelia's radio transmissions, but the only transmissions she acknowledges receiving from the Coast Guard were the 'A's (.- .- .- .- in Morse Code) they were transmitting on 7500 MHz. To receive these she would have switched her receiver from the missing reception antenna to the 'Loop' antenna used for RDF. She reported being unable to get a Null and of course, 7500 MHz is way too high a frequency to use for 'Loop' direction finding. Neither Amelia nor Fred were proficient in Morse Code and the Coast Guard only had voice capability on their lower frequency's, not on 7500 MHz. Had she tried the Loop Antenna on a Coast Guard Voice Frequency, she should have heard them and at one of the frequency's below 1600 MHz, she would have been able to get that Null and seen where Howland was located. The most likely answer to the mystery is that they landed on a reef at uninhabited Gardner Island (located along the Celestial Line Of Position that she last reported they were following), there were many reports of radio calls from their Lockheed 10E and it's radio would not function if they were floating, Several of Pan Am's High Frequency directional reception stations plotted lines that intersected in the area of Gardner Island. During the second week of that huge Navy Search, a Battleship Float Plane made some passes over Gardner Island and did not see her Electra, but Radio Transmissions had ended by that time and it is speculated that Higher Tides and Surf had washed the Lockheed off the reef by then. They did report seeing "signs of recent habitation" and did not know that Gardner was not inhabited and no follow-up visit was attempted. Those Bones were discovered in 1940 by a British Colonization attempt and they were later lost during the war, but measurements surviving match a tall female of European stature...