three things

1. They took off from Lae
2. They didn't land at Howland
3. They went South on L.O.P
My Reason to believe No.3
because when they said must be on you but cannot see u, they were going off The Time Airspeed and were they shud be on Map
we know they didn't find howland, so we can speculate they didn't have a fix until they announced they were on the 157/337 L.O.P
let's say were approaching the T junction of flight path to the L.O.P 337/157
the sun comes up north of L.O.P correct
but we know from itasca reports an other search party's the reason for searching north of Howland was because they said the sky to north was full of culminus clouds and south was clear blue sky
now my opinion is this...
they were about to join L.O.P, if u go left ur gunna fly in to clouds and if ur waiting to see Sun to get fix, the closer you get to clouds the longer u will have to wait for Sun to rise over clouds !!!
also there is no islands to north of Howland for a good 1000 miles ?
if u see sky to the north is full of clouds an Ur waiting to get a fix.... U THEY are going to go south for the simple reason the further u go away from clouds the quicker Ur going to see the sun an be able to get fix plus they know they had more chance of finding an Island Reef Atoll etc ..
also the Itasca didn't actually hear Earhart till 07:42 as it was NRUI who were relaying messages till then,
so given last transmission for Itasca at 08:43 sort of makes sense why they didn't hear nothink, after that time
