On texture and pixels:
I think the culprit of the 35+ posts is the suggestive ellipse drawn by Centrosphere in his post #246. Without that, the smooth area is about as wide as the DFDR 'box' but deeper than the ellipse suggests. In the nearly two years that this piece has been lying there, there must have been episodes of significant water currents across the 'abyssal plain'. The area we're looking at could well be the 'wind shadow' of the chassis, covered with finer material than the more exposed area's around it.
On impact forces:
What puzzles me is that the mounting platform of the CSMU is bent upwards, i.e. opposite to the inertia forces one would expect. That could be explained by the hydrodynamic forces acting either on the fuselage skin or directly on the DFDR mounting. But how was the CSMU then torn off its mountings?
Last edited by HazelNuts39; 28th April 2011 at 22:14.