Originally Posted by Mountain Bear
What would be interesting to do is some type of statistical smoothing. For example, if the plane was flying a consistent speed one would expect the increasing ping delay to follow a consistent, not random, pattern. OTOH if the ping delays were increasing at an increasing rate then distance alone might not explain it. The forensic calculations get complicated quickly having to take into account so many parameters. I'm going to assume that they go it right and have had many different eyeballs look at it. But I do not think we should treat the result of such calculations as a certainty, more like an educated guess.
- don't forget a ?sinusoidal? rate of change if the TX crosses the concentric signal elevations.
brika - no more help in that link!