Lyman,
What I said about the C chord generator burning out was tongue-in-cheek. I know nothing about how it functions. As I said, does it really matter?
JCJ,
Regarding the meaning of the captain's "prends ça", Otelli wrote that it is difficult to know what he was referring to but the BEA investigators favoured the idea that it was the FPV.
Why do you call Otelli's book "useless"? Not only does it contain the entire CVR transcript but the transcript is an improvement on the bare-bones version released by the BEA in that the reader gains an impression of the tone of voice used (exclamation, question, etc.). Also, Otelli has filled in some of the blanks in the BEA release (whether that's accurate or not is another matter, of course). Finally, Otelli has keyed the CVR to the FDR and thus provides background to at least some of the crew's statements and actions.
Clearly the key to the tragedy of AF447 is the CVR transcipt. For those of us who possessed a copy of Otelli's book (published in late 2011), the release of the BEA final report was very much an anti-climax.