In my prevoius post (page 162 / message 3234) is suspected that the rain and hail attenuation would be the cause of the lost 31 seconds of ACARS-txm:s. JD-EE replied on page 164 /message 3263 that it only could be possible IF the A/C already had diverted to a lower flightlevel.
To be sure that the figures was right in this matter, I started to do several "link-budgets" to the Inmarsat bird that is in geo-position (=fixed service). As transmissions on this latitude is nearly straight up, the rain-attenuation is approx 8 times worse than having the same situation above Paris/France for example.
While I made these calculations and checked the equipment on this flight, I made a cruel discovery, I therefore ask all aviation experts here to have a close look at my findings and please replay if this could be the "missing detail".
When calculating the attenuation I got a max of approx 18 dB:s that could make the L-band carrier lost temporary for the satellite, but this only if the flight had diverted to a lower flightlevel around approx 15.000 feet.
But the real suprising fact is that the Satocm unit of EMS 3800 has limit of 530knt/mach 0.95 with max pressure of 4,5kPa. I then suspected that there was a chance of the Satcom-dome getting "ripped-off" in high speed, and if that was the case, there should be a 50% chance that the dome would slam into the a/c - vs and leave a impact trace.
So I checked on the 2 first photos from the rodder pictures in the water and compare with the Paris may 31st photo, and indeed, there is a quit big impact trace on the rodder that would match the size of the dome from the cockpit.
