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Interesting. Both your picture and the earlier drawings make no mention of a transmitting antenna which I think I saw decades ago on “In Search Of” running the length of the aircraft on the underside. At least I think it was this show, that showed a “puff” emitted from underneath during the grassy-field take-off just at the tail, which looked convincingly like the antenna end being popped lose. This was the last leg of her fatal flight.

I think the idea was that Earhart could transmit all she wanted, but no one could hear her. The attempts to contact receivers at the landing location were doomed to failure.

Yep, I saw that film to. The transmitter was dangling behind the plane attached to the wire as it took off in the field. I had remembered that a person in New York had a radio and claimed to receive transmissions from what he thought was Amelia late at night (New York time) who was in trouble.

I read a very interesting and well-documented book about Earhart. It made a huge deal of the misscommunication that may have occurred. NUMEROUS things that all added up. IIRC she took over some of the radio controls for that trip. It was set up for both radio and morse code - with radio to be used at the top of the hour, and morse on the half hour (or something like that).

BUT - the radio based on Howland Island was out of service - so they used a radio that had come in from Hawaii and was anchored at Howland. BUT - the ship's clock was set to Hawaii time, which was a half-hour off from Howland Island time.

So she was sending morse code while they were listening to radio. (Plus something to do with the time that the plane was using - which was from its last departure).

This was all brought up in the investigation, which is why they went to Greenwich Mean Time thereafter.

It would have been relatively easy for her to know when she got to the same longitude as the island, and then she would use the radio and/or morse code signal strength to determine if she was north or south of the island. (Fly south, signal gets weaker, island is to the north). But if you aren't getting any signals....