Dutch Bru;
First, I have to say, as others have, what a thoroughly-conceived and well-written Interim Report this is by the CIAIC. There are a number of important areas covered as have been pointed out. The report indicates quite clearly under the last section, "3. STATUS OF THE INVESTIGATION" that the investigation is ongoing and will thoroughly report on those "softer", organizational issues which may yield deeper lessons.
Are they actually saying as much that the QAR retrieved could not have recorded the data on the disk retrieved from the QAR ?
Assuming, of course, that the QAR in question and the disk in question were indeed retrieved from the accident aircraft, it is to me at least not immediately clear, with the disk apparently installed a few weeks before the accident, any malfunction of the QAR/disk would have gone unnoticed before the accident. Doesn't Spanair retrieve the data regularly for a flight analysis programme ?
Perhaps this and the apparent lack of interest on the side of the investigation board has to do with the fact that QAR is not "mandatory equipment".
Yes, they are saying that the QAR retrieved could not have recorded the data.
The Teledyne FDAU, Flight Data Aquisition Unit will be a specific installation with specific software for the recording medium including the LFL, (Logical Frame Layout) which specifies parameters captured. Normally, QARs record hundreds sometimes thousands of parameters more than the minimum DFDR parameters required by a country's laws.
The problem as I read it in this report is, the FDAU software was not compatible with the installed optical disc. There may be small differences in the LFL which prevents the recording of parameters into the frame layout. It would be like trying to put a 4x512-cell spreadsheet into a 4x256-cell spreadsheet - the data would be garbage. In very rough terms, it would be like trying to run a PC with a Leopard operating system.
As equipment is upgraded and better solutions to recording equipment and recording mediums emerge and as improved LFLs emerge, (
if the airline is supporting their FDM program appropriately), such mismatches are normally resolved during the research, purchase and installation phases.
Regarding the delay in becoming aware of the problem, Optical and PCMCIA cards are typically not read every day and usually hold a week or more worth of flight data. They are typically removed from the aircraft, the data downloaded and stored every week to ten days. Discovering an "event", or a problem with the equipment would be affected by that time delay. This is not an uncommon nor untoward matter when doing FDA work.