What amazes me is how this entire search effort has been run and has fallen apart.
Some common sense, and easily determined processes have been completely ignored.
As an example, with a pinger search, reverse the thought process using simple GPS navigation concepts.
The search vessel is a satellite, and the pinger is the aircraft that wants to know its location.
For GPS navigation, if you only see one sat, what do you get...nothing. with 2 sats, what do you get...distance. It takes at least 3 sats to get your position, correct?
So, with one search vessel listening to a pinger, what do you get...nothing
If you had 2 search vessels, they could coordinate their locations with the exact time they rec'd the ping. you would get distance, but along an infinite line.
If you had 3 search vessels collaborated, you would get the horizontal location. It is really that intuative.
One vessel, one UAV, whatever...seems relatively hopeless.
too bad the exact time of all of the different signals between all of the vessels could not be compared, if they happened all at the same time.
(it should be noted that transponder batteries can last a long time, beacause it responds to a signal. There are many biologics, such as dolphins and whales that it will respond to. Especially with dolphins, they will try to have a conversation with a transponder, wearing down the batteries pretty quickly)
You should get in touch asap! If only they'd had you on board..
