Malaysian Airlines MH370 contact lost
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But let's wait and see what this mysterious object really is. Who knows.
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@capot - The search is being co-ordinated internationally by the UN-SPIDER organisation. UN-SPIDER is a platform set up to co-ordinate space-based information for disaster management. This is the first time that it has been initiated for lost aircraft recovery.
Re the on-the-job co-ordination; it is exceptionally difficult to co-ordinate SAR groups that have different languages and differing levels of discipline and command structures.
English is still a foreign language to many billions of people.
Therefore, it is easier to merely co-ordinate the separate search groups into a common aim, allowing each group to operate independently using its native language and command structure.
Local level co-ordination is being handled by AMSA, as the search zone is within AMSA's recognised maritime control area.
International Charter activated for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 | UN-SPIDER Knowledge Portal
Re the on-the-job co-ordination; it is exceptionally difficult to co-ordinate SAR groups that have different languages and differing levels of discipline and command structures.
English is still a foreign language to many billions of people.
Therefore, it is easier to merely co-ordinate the separate search groups into a common aim, allowing each group to operate independently using its native language and command structure.
Local level co-ordination is being handled by AMSA, as the search zone is within AMSA's recognised maritime control area.
International Charter activated for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 | UN-SPIDER Knowledge Portal
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In reference to last ATC conversation, did the MH370 ever read back the new frequency?
All the casual stuff about good night etc. is not an issue, as this is normal, however 2 things that you would expect that is not specified in the transcript, and that is why was not the new frequency read back, and the aircraft's call-sign?
These might be small details in the big picture, however sometimes the devil lies in the detail.
Why would they fly at 29.500 (FL295)
How has the documentation of the inital climb to FL450 - then FL230 and then FL295 - during same time new tracks.
To many questions and not enough answers.
All the casual stuff about good night etc. is not an issue, as this is normal, however 2 things that you would expect that is not specified in the transcript, and that is why was not the new frequency read back, and the aircraft's call-sign?
These might be small details in the big picture, however sometimes the devil lies in the detail.
Why would they fly at 29.500 (FL295)
How has the documentation of the inital climb to FL450 - then FL230 and then FL295 - during same time new tracks.
To many questions and not enough answers.
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New debris at S44°57' E90°14'
Chinese finding is 3092NM from last radar plot past MEKAR.
Flying time 6 h 52 min at 450 kts.
Not taking into account turn at a later waypoint, zig-zag flying, debris drift etc.
Just for overview.
Flying time 6 h 52 min at 450 kts.
Not taking into account turn at a later waypoint, zig-zag flying, debris drift etc.
Just for overview.
Chinese finding is 3092NM from last radar plot past MEKAR.
Flying time 6 h 52 min at 450 kts.
Not taking into account turn at a later waypoint, zig-zag flying, debris drift etc.
Flying time 6 h 52 min at 450 kts.
Not taking into account turn at a later waypoint, zig-zag flying, debris drift etc.
And good luck mounting a SAR expedition there...
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Nearly 45 deg S is definitely in the region of regular remnant icebergs. 90% of a 777 is metal, 10% is composite.
Does anyone really believe that a 22m x 13m (72' x 42') section of a 777 would still be floating on the surface after 2 weeks in Southern Indian Ocean swells and storms??
Does anyone really believe that a 22m x 13m (72' x 42') section of a 777 would still be floating on the surface after 2 weeks in Southern Indian Ocean swells and storms??
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Some points.
The Southern Ocean is full of debris because it has nothing to bump into. It can just go round and round.
The Northern route could have gone through some very soft or non existent air defences and primary radar. Myanmar. The Myanmar/Chinese border, Tibet, Natal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan.
Especially in the early hours of the morning at the weekend.
It is very difficult not to have rechargeable lithium cells on a flight. They are in everything these days.
Very many thousand of torches like this are flying right now in jiffy bags, for instance: UltraFire 2000Lm CREE XM-L T6 LED Zoom Zoomable Flashlight Torch Light 5 Modes | eBay
UK defence planners have seen this and must now be making a very good case for a purchase of Boeing P-8s. It is a scandal that we don't have this resource.
T7 entered service in 1995 and nearly 1,200 have been built, so it has many millions of flying hours. But this does not mean that every possible fault in the aircraft has been found. As BA 38 and SU-GBP proved.
The Southern Ocean is full of debris because it has nothing to bump into. It can just go round and round.
The Northern route could have gone through some very soft or non existent air defences and primary radar. Myanmar. The Myanmar/Chinese border, Tibet, Natal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan.
Especially in the early hours of the morning at the weekend.
It is very difficult not to have rechargeable lithium cells on a flight. They are in everything these days.
Very many thousand of torches like this are flying right now in jiffy bags, for instance: UltraFire 2000Lm CREE XM-L T6 LED Zoom Zoomable Flashlight Torch Light 5 Modes | eBay
UK defence planners have seen this and must now be making a very good case for a purchase of Boeing P-8s. It is a scandal that we don't have this resource.
T7 entered service in 1995 and nearly 1,200 have been built, so it has many millions of flying hours. But this does not mean that every possible fault in the aircraft has been found. As BA 38 and SU-GBP proved.
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Re: How Satellite Pings Work
Rory 166 refers us back to AT1's post no.7124, now on page 357, where, a telecoms engineer explains in striking detail how these satellites work and the accuracies involved.
This is dense stuff, but well written and I would like to add my thanks to AT1 for his work in putting that very helpful explanation together.
This is dense stuff, but well written and I would like to add my thanks to AT1 for his work in putting that very helpful explanation together.
It is the INMARSAT business to ensure that these thousands of aircraft transmissions are not mixed up. So the hypothesis that they 'tracked the wrong plane' is just not supportable.
Those who have laboured through thousands of posts this week will have heard the INMARSAT chap explaining in very clear terms that the nearest analogy is the SIM card in your mobile phone having a unique identity that carriers pick up. Similarly INMARSAT satellites pick up the unique IDs from aircraft, no confusion at all.
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To put this hypothesis to bed. The satellite has a footprint that covers approximately one third of the Earth's surface. Even though there are lots of empty spaces in the southern Indian Ocean, this satellite also covers a lot of Africa, India, most of Russia and most of Europe. These are not silent areas, there are lots of transmissions to 'listen' to. The only way the satellite can discriminate between 'pings' from aircraft is that these low level protocol 'pings' are actually short messages with a unique 'electronic aircraft address'. It is the INMARSAT business to ensure that these thousands of aircraft transmissions are not mixed up. So the hypothesis that they 'tracked the wrong plane' is just not supportable.
I took a look at post 7124. I have to say that I don't buy this. It basically says that the antenna on the aircraft is tied to an extremely fast computer chip that is guaranteed to send a response to the "ping" from the satellite within a few nanoseconds of receipt. I don't have any documentation to back this, but I find this extremely improbable, especially for a 1980's system (classic aero). And, more generally, no one writes networking code like this, not even in perfectly controlled conditions, let alone for a noisy 36000 km long satellite link. The computer in charge of sending the response may have other things to do, it will reply eventually, but realtime response is not guaranteed.
What I _could_ easily buy is the presumption that the satellite has a very precise clock, and the aircraft has a different clock, and the response to the ping has a timestamp that the satellite can compare against its own clock, thus estimating time of flight. We are still talking about extremely precise timing. The entire process could be rendered useless if there's an unpredictable source of lag on the order of as little as 1 millisecond between timestamping and sending/receiving, or if the clock that's attached to the Classic Aero antenna on the aircraft drifts off by 1 millisecond over the course of flight. Since this system was never designed for the purposes of tracking aircraft, there can be any number of potential unknown sources of error.
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Chinese object is a 18 Mar image
Original objects are 16 Mar, and approx. 70NM NE of the latest Chinese position.
Surface drift I believe is a little North of East? i.e. wrong way.
Does not figure to me they are logically connected... if so, 1 set or other are false, and if we can get false images, or rather objects not related to MH370, seems to me P any image is MH370 is reduced?
Original objects are 16 Mar, and approx. 70NM NE of the latest Chinese position.
Surface drift I believe is a little North of East? i.e. wrong way.
Does not figure to me they are logically connected... if so, 1 set or other are false, and if we can get false images, or rather objects not related to MH370, seems to me P any image is MH370 is reduced?
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Pings getting longer
Assuming longer meaning distance...
(and applying to southern red line)
..if a/c climbed back to FL350 or so and then, for whatever reason, descended gradually along the same path...pings would get longer as the a/c would be increasing it's distance from the satellite (direct line of comm at lower altitude=further from sat)(but further u are from sat, the smaller the difference becomes)
One possibility.
The other would be.... flying away, directly or tangentially, from satellite...and, if descending, would make pings even longer.
Just a thought.
Note: timestamping errors as mentioned by hamster3null #7286 would be an added problem for calculations.
(and applying to southern red line)
..if a/c climbed back to FL350 or so and then, for whatever reason, descended gradually along the same path...pings would get longer as the a/c would be increasing it's distance from the satellite (direct line of comm at lower altitude=further from sat)(but further u are from sat, the smaller the difference becomes)
One possibility.
The other would be.... flying away, directly or tangentially, from satellite...and, if descending, would make pings even longer.
Just a thought.
Note: timestamping errors as mentioned by hamster3null #7286 would be an added problem for calculations.
Last edited by brika; 22nd Mar 2014 at 11:36. Reason: additional info
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I was sent the following link by another ppruner who was not sure if it was useful. It shows the military radar plot of the LKP. It is hard to interpret a dynamic plot from a single screen shot.
Interestingly, as far as I can see, this is a raw radar plot and I cannot make out any track label on MH370 as screen does not have sufficient definition although the radar has an electronic map overlay.
??????????????? ??????[??] _????_???
Interestingly, as far as I can see, this is a raw radar plot and I cannot make out any track label on MH370 as screen does not have sufficient definition although the radar has an electronic map overlay.
??????????????? ??????[??] _????_???
VBT R295 200 NM is here (clearly not the point depicted on the radar plot):
VBT R295 200NM - SkyVector Aeronautical Charts
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A bit late but thanks, ZAZ, for posting the link:
The sinister, scary impact of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 - Intelligent Travel
This is an intelligent piece of writing and I thought, bearing in mind the criticism of the amount of dross that has been posted on this thread, that is was worthwhile highlighting this paragraph: (the italics are mine)
If one is intelligent enough to spot and ignore the dross, one can learn a lot from a thread like this, as indeed I, and I am sure many others, have. Thanks to all of you.
The sinister, scary impact of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 - Intelligent Travel
This is an intelligent piece of writing and I thought, bearing in mind the criticism of the amount of dross that has been posted on this thread, that is was worthwhile highlighting this paragraph: (the italics are mine)
Ethiopian Airlines Flight 702 was significant not because it involved the alleged hijacking of an aircraft heading to the EU and a major capital city but because the story was not released by professional or government agencies and it involved one of the crew as the alleged hijacker. Online enthusiasts, rank amateurs and other crowdsourced intelligence were responsible for the identification, reporting and tracking of the incident which in turn fed the international news community. If not for this happenstance and skilled online community coming together at that particular time and seeing the incident through until conclusion, it would have just been a single line news updates online or during the evening news.
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One thing which bothers me from the very beginning of this strange "ping" discussion: who says the latency of the ping signal is the same as in clear sky and fully operational device?
These southern and northern arcs are derived from a time delay measured from a satellite and calculated straight forward. BUT, how says there is nothing obscuring the delay, i.e. covers are known to delay these signals and maybe the device aboard is not fully functional, even a torn wire will put additional latency? So, conclusion: these arcs are the max. distance from the satellite, not necessarily the most probable. With this, the plane can sit anywhere on half the world.
This speculation is not less probable as all the others, or?
BTW: 45 south? I find it hard to believe that MH370 could come that far. How many abandoned ships float there in the roaring forties?
These southern and northern arcs are derived from a time delay measured from a satellite and calculated straight forward. BUT, how says there is nothing obscuring the delay, i.e. covers are known to delay these signals and maybe the device aboard is not fully functional, even a torn wire will put additional latency? So, conclusion: these arcs are the max. distance from the satellite, not necessarily the most probable. With this, the plane can sit anywhere on half the world.
This speculation is not less probable as all the others, or?
BTW: 45 south? I find it hard to believe that MH370 could come that far. How many abandoned ships float there in the roaring forties?
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Bayesian Theory that helped AF447
BBC News now carrying this easy guide to how it worked for AF447. Must admit I found this rather neat !
BBC News - MH370 Malaysia plane: How maths helped find an earlier crash
BBC News - MH370 Malaysia plane: How maths helped find an earlier crash
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What if they tracked the right plane, but they messed up their calculations?
I took a look at post 7124. I have to say that I don't buy this. It basically says that the antenna on the aircraft is tied to an extremely fast computer chip that is guaranteed to send a response to the "ping" from the satellite within a few nanoseconds of receipt. I don't have any documentation to back this, but I find this extremely improbable, especially for a 1980's system (classic aero). And, more generally, no one writes networking code like this, not even in perfectly controlled conditions, let alone for a noisy 36000 km long satellite link. The computer in charge of sending the response may have other things to do, it will reply eventually, but realtime response is not guaranteed.
What I _could_ easily buy is the presumption that the satellite has a very precise clock, and the aircraft has a different clock, and the response to the ping has a timestamp that the satellite can compare against its own clock, thus estimating time of flight. We are still talking about extremely precise timing. The entire process could be rendered useless if there's an unpredictable source of lag on the order of as little as 1 millisecond between timestamping and sending/receiving, or if the clock that's attached to the Classic Aero antenna on the aircraft drifts off by 1 millisecond over the course of flight. Since this system was never designed for the purposes of tracking aircraft, there can be any number of potential unknown sources of error.
I took a look at post 7124. I have to say that I don't buy this. It basically says that the antenna on the aircraft is tied to an extremely fast computer chip that is guaranteed to send a response to the "ping" from the satellite within a few nanoseconds of receipt. I don't have any documentation to back this, but I find this extremely improbable, especially for a 1980's system (classic aero). And, more generally, no one writes networking code like this, not even in perfectly controlled conditions, let alone for a noisy 36000 km long satellite link. The computer in charge of sending the response may have other things to do, it will reply eventually, but realtime response is not guaranteed.
What I _could_ easily buy is the presumption that the satellite has a very precise clock, and the aircraft has a different clock, and the response to the ping has a timestamp that the satellite can compare against its own clock, thus estimating time of flight. We are still talking about extremely precise timing. The entire process could be rendered useless if there's an unpredictable source of lag on the order of as little as 1 millisecond between timestamping and sending/receiving, or if the clock that's attached to the Classic Aero antenna on the aircraft drifts off by 1 millisecond over the course of flight. Since this system was never designed for the purposes of tracking aircraft, there can be any number of potential unknown sources of error.
The calculations will have been checked by a whole raft of international experts in SATCOM that have the raw data from INMARSAT. I don't think someone worked this out on the back of an envelope using iffy data and phoned it through.
VIC SES
Minske/SpaceJet,
I understand that the VIC SES crew heading over are qualified air observers who have been trained by AMSA and participate in aerial searches, usually with the civvy SAR aircraft.
I understand that the VIC SES crew heading over are qualified air observers who have been trained by AMSA and participate in aerial searches, usually with the civvy SAR aircraft.
