Could Earhart’s Transmitter Operate If Her Plane Was Afloat?

[C.W. Herndon]

Glad I could help. The part about the radios working, YES. The part about Niku, we think so, still trying to prove that.

[C.W. Herndon]

Thanks CW
That does finally get it through my thick head, a ditched engine can't run, a non-functioning engine means the generator doesn't run, no generator and the dynamotor doesn't run, no dynamotor and the radio won't work. Therefore if any of the post loss radio transmissions are real then AE was on land ( or beach or reef).  And if the transmissions used to do the rf bearings were real then niku is the only reasonable piece of land that they could have been on.
Thanks

Matt, now that you understand a simple explanation of the problem, here is a more detailed version if you want to go there. It talks about low voltage DC and high voltage DC instead of DC and AC power. I used the DC/AC to try to make things a little more simple.

http://tighar.org/wiki/Lockheed_Electra_10E_Special_-_NR16020

[John Ousterhout]

Matt, I think you're finally 'getting it', thanks to Woody clarifying things better than I can, especially for the diagram. The dynamotor could run off of the battery, but not if it was wet.  If the engine could run the generator, but the dynamotor was wet, the radio would still not work.  That part of the aircraft would have needed to be not just above water, but dry, to transmit.  That pretty well dictates that it needed to be above water all of the time.  Dip a dynamotor in salt water and it stops producting high voltage, even after drying out.  It would need to be rinsed with fresh water, at a minimum, unless it had arced and made carbon tracks on the insulation.  In that case it's permanently inop until rebuilt.

[Jeff Victor Hayden]

Fuses would be the first to go, that's their job, to protect the circuit. Water will conduct voltage and current to parts of the circuit it was not designed to handle, pop!