Response to Sunfish....
Thanks Sunny all good points.
You would be correct about testing a drone before the venture to PNG but I don't think we are going down that path. The logistics of getting a drone into PNG and down to site without damage to delicate equipment get a bit difficult. We had the same thought with a LiDAR drone and when I heard it needed a largish box and was two stroke powered that raised the DG question for airfreight plus getting it down by road near enough to the site and hoping the out of sight programming boomeranged it back to base was too much.
What 240V electrickery ? None... General Store nearby ? None. There is one miles away across the river at the Palm Oil HQ site but I am told the prices are three times the Kokopo price. Any transport ? None. I did borrow the village bicycle once. It had no rotating pedal footpads and no brakes. Local bureaucracy ? One time when we went down by boat the Local MP asked for a lift from a relief stop along the Gazelle Coast and on to Wide Bay in our hired boat and never said a word to me until we got to the little boat bay near Kalai. Then as he was leaving for Kalai he turned to me and said, "Yu find any-ting, you come talk to me OK ?".... It was an order...
Yes, it may well be flattened as you say, certainly the bare, house block-sized patch I saw (and now suspect) in late 1996 was fairly level which is why I thought at the time that they might well be intending to store logs there before the Jinker picked them up as we had seen a similar area down by the main river that was being used for that purpose. However I may be totally wrong about that cleared patch.
Against that thought is that the information that came with the news of the burial was that the BD driver did intend to go back and dig it out at some stage when we had stopped searching. Even if the stamped Data Plate on the Instrument Panel has corroded to dust there are enough identifying features on the aircraft for a positive i.D. Flattened is an extreme but when I.D.'d, someone else can take over and then the geniuses can work out the rest.
Sunfish, you sound less skeptical !