PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Flaperon washes up on Reunion Island
View Single Post
Old 4th Aug 2015, 01:03
  #317 (permalink)  
PrivtPilotRadarTech
 
Join Date: Jul 2014
Location: Santa Rosa, CA, USA
Age: 71
Posts: 169
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Propduffer, using an online "radar horizon calculator" I come up with about 21,000' for the radar horizon at 247 nm, given the elevation of that radar site. That is, anything below that altitude would not be visible to that radar. At one point there was a photo online, taken by a cell phone of a map shown to the Chinese relatives of the missing passengers. It showed the NW track of the target, with a gap in the middle. Logically that could mean that MH370 was flying low enough to go below the radar horizon, then climbed and reappeared. I would add, from experience as a USAF radar tech, everything is classified. Even though your enemies can easily figure out the limitations of your radar coverage. So I'm sure some Malaysian generals weren't happy about any public disclosures of where and at what altitude they could or couldn't track a target. There has been fighting between Muslims and Buddhists in Thailand, and there was a little war between Malaysia and Indonesia in the mid 60's, so there are local tensions.
PrivtPilotRadarTech is offline