Originally Posted by
silvertate
Not so. The final ping-ring gives a multitude of fuel-burn rates and speeds, all of which can reach somewhere along that long arc. Remember that the track-length between ping-rings varies, depending on whether you fly south or fly east - and that will greatly effect the fuel-burn/speed profile of the flight.
So you can have a low-burn/high-speed flight - and end up south and west of Australia. (Yellow track.)
Or you can have a high-burn/low-speed flight - and end up north and west of Australia. (Purple track.)
Right.
Now let's say that you can narrow down the burn rate and speed to the point where you're certain that it's not yellow track, and it's closer to purple to red. (After all, fuel burn and speed are continuous variables). On your map, the distance between red and purple tracks is ~1000 km. So you need to search the strip running 500 km to either side of the purple track.
You know the partial ping arc with precision of, say, +/-100 km. The aircraft may have glided 100 km after it ran out of fuel. That makes your strip 1000 km long x 300 km wide.
This is all very good fine tuning (you cut down the search area to less than 10% of what you started with).
That's still roughly the size of Germany.
Now you have to search Germany on foot (Ocean Shield's speed while searching, ~2 kts, is comparable to walking speed) while carrying a device that can detect a hidden transmitter if you are within 2 km of its location.