I see some considerations about Ground Earth Station in recent posts. In the published "raw data", there is this "remark":
"
16:41 - Take-Off.Logged-On to Ground Earth Station (GES) 305/301, via the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) Inmarsat I-3 satellite"
And, the title line of each page shows that the GES numbers are octal.
There are only 4 lines with the code 301 on the main data pages (at 18:39:52,907), 2 in Appendix A (at 18:39:58,407 and 18:40:55,407) and none in Appendix B.
305 (197 decimal) is Perth and 301 (193 decimal) is Eik (in Norway) from the page 21 of this doc:
http://esupport.thrane.com/index.php...oaditemid=1411 (found reading Reddt post
GES ID (octal) 305, what is 301? : MH370).
A note on the same page indicates that only Perth and Eik support the "Aero 1" services, but the document is from 2002.
About the (virtual) "nominal terminal": I don't understand why to use a virtual terminal which will ask for theoretical computation. I would understand the use of a physical one which could continuously give a "balance duration" by sending back some signal. Is it technically possible that a "special" signal from the GES is regularly sent and its very faint echo from the Earth surface (sea for instance!) below the satellite is detected and used? And by difference gives the BTO value?
Why the first "publications" from Inmarsat about the "pings" were angles? In the first days after, some people had thought those angles were from signal strength or from antenna number: this happens to be false (strength gives a too low accuracy, and 3F1 is not a multi-beam satellite). We know now that these arcs come from a duration. So, why to convert this value in angles rather than in distances?
If the BTO is computed like guessed above, the simplest geometry using the true distance of the satellite from the Earth center and the Earth radius gives an angle (from the arccosine of the relation between the sides of a triangle).