Originally Posted by
Speed of Sound
Am I missing something here?
Surely these additional pings would just give us a series of extra arcs that tell us nothing more than the average speed for each hourly portion of the flight and whether the aircraft was traveling away from or towards the satellite?
NOT TRUE.
if you flew at 90deg to the rings the 1hr period would carry you the maximum distance from the previous ring. If you flew at a true tangent to the previous ring the distance from it to the next ring would be the minimum (same distance flown but less distance out from previous ring.
If that variance was constant each hour it indicates aircraft on a consistent course but no indication to what that course would be, I did state in the original post way back assuming a constant speed ( as that is what the seem to be assuming.
However to me a consistent course equals south