Originally Posted by
Pace
Henra
Why would you need to fly the route in a real aircraft with different winds and conditions ?
In order to emulate exactly the Doppler effects and Signal strength of the SAT Connection.
Winds/conditions are irrelevant for that. It would be important to get the timing right relative to the Satellite position and movement.
When replicating 1:1 it should become possible to identify deviations from the calculated/assumed course/speed combination, thereby validating the current search area.
Amplitudes and steepness of Doppler shift change should be identical.
If this cannot be replicated exactly 1:1 it may be time for a re-think.
Plus the steepness of the change of Doppler shift tells you something about the effective Speed vector of the aircraft relative to the satellite.
Steeper drop in Doppler means faster airspeed or more orthogonal course relative to the arc.
Since there is a mutual dependency of Speed, angles relative towards the arcs and timing of crossing of the different arcs, you could draw conclusions regarding where exactly to search from deviations or match of the values seen with MH370.
Edit: The more orthogonal the course relative to the arcs, the more even spaced will the Timings be between crossing the different arcs (if we assume a constant airspeed in the last stage of the flight). Thus there will be a more or less unique pattern for each combination of Speed and course, only limited by the accuracy of the data.