>> reporter: this is where neil campbell and his team forensically examine data recorders from planes, trains and ships. >> the reality is there are very few countries who have the technical know how to work out what's inside one of these things, and this lab is one of those places. >> reporter: boxes from other investigations torn apart, burned, damaged in many ways suggest a tough assignment, but here they say the story of what happened is usually found. >> a lot of our work is with undamaged recorders. it's very easy to download them. >> reporter: even with very damaged ones, your success rate in getting the information off is good. >> yes. we've always been able to recover the information from recorders we've seen. >> reporter: he is a measured, cautious man. a job involves knowledge and patience. lots of patience. >> from the flight data recorder we obtain a raw data files.