Speaking of long range radars.

The Australian military has a over the horizon system called "jindalee" that may be able to track Aircraft as far away as Malaysia.

I wonder if the Malaysians have bothered to ask if Australia could check its files of radar traces for that time?

Jindalee Operational Radar Network - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Help in the search
 

Can I make everyone aware that satellite imagery provider DigitalGlobe has upload over 25000 high resolution maps taken from their satellites pointed at the search area on March 9th. As this is an ongoing search they are appealing for those interested in helping the search effort to scroll through images and tag what might be rafts, wreckage, oil slicks or other markers. Many people noticing the same thing in the same spot would trigger an alert on the company's end.

Tomnod

I have already spent 6 hours searching and have found some objects of interest.

A catastrophic failure of the fuselage, perhaps due to these supposed cracks near the GPS antenna, could lead to the rapid break up of the aircraft.

The explosive decompression and rapid onset cluster of system failures would overwhelm the best of us.

35'000' would give useful consciousness of about 20secs, probably insufficient for meaningful diagnosis and response.

No large pieces would make tracking by primary radar difficult.

I'd be looking for wreckage in a plume downwind of the last known position. Didn't see the high level chart, but I'm guessing that the seasonal jet would be westerly at 60-90 kts at that position?

Perhaps someone could enlighten us?

Summary:

1. Malaysian authorities do not have a clue where the aircraft is.
2. Malaysian authorities have seen an unidentified object flying at FL295 NO of Penang. Not sure if this is MH370. Maybe on Thursday more info on this.
3 SAR continues both east and west of Malaysia
4 Much unconfirmed info like eyewitness reports about seeing debris.
5 We do not know anything about the cause. We only know all comms were gone.

primary radar
 

To get an idea of how messy primary radar can be, just read the TWA-800 article on Wikipedia:

TWA Flight 800 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lots of conspiracy theories about the various tracks, such as the 30-knot one. Imagine if they released the tracks from Malaysia radar, I could only imagine the speculations.

1asoundasleep- 777 sliderafts are large, silver in color and rectangular. Aviation liferafts of the hexagonal shape (Goodrich brand iirc) are bright yellow. A slideraft gets any yellow/orange colour from the canopy which is separate and would be erected by the crew once the raft is seaworthy.

As for provisions, it would totally depend on the amount of people in each slideraft, time adrift, etc... I believe two weeks would not be out of possibility but tbh I've never seen quantities listed in my manual... only general list of items.

USS Kidd (DDG-100) Radar is multi-function, phased-array, three-dimensional (range, altitude, and bearing) and 500Km range

But even if these guys where close and having an eye on anything closing in onto the helicopter carrier they are protecting, they would not be interested in an object flying at 29'000 feet.

I don't know about the capabilities of the Malaysian, Indonesian and Vietnames Radar systems. Swiss, French and US Navy are 3-Dimensional, which means range, altitude and bearing.

For me there is too much confusion and miscommunication. First they have the aircraft east coast, then all of a sudden west coast and 1000m, then they suspect it in front of Ho-Chi Min City and now finally it is located south of Phuket.

Why none has asked the Indonesian guys yet to deliver any a radar data. It could be interesting to know if an unidentified object was flying over the area of Banda Aceh in direction of the indian ocean. Would this be the case, you could stop searching ...

Silver/Grey. The door slides are detachable as life rafts. An orange detachable canopy is stored with it.

Need to keep in mind that the blokes standing up at the press conference are very senior military and govt officials . They are not used to having their words interrogated or mistakes pointed out to them . Having the worlds media point out inconsistencies is not sitting well with them and they are not handling it .

As fr a standby list on a plane that appears not to be full- it is possible they were operating a restricted passenger load due to cargo/weight restrictions. Any T7 drivers care to comment?

My lot do this regularly but it is usually on much longer routes...

If your posts are deleted and you don't understand why, can I suggest you stop posting? Find somewhere else on the internet other than PPRUNE to share your thinking. Most certainly stop clogging up such an important thread whining about such deletions.

This is not a site for conspiracy theorists or fantasists.

In summary, the apparent loss of MH370, along with hundreds of souls including a highly experienced crew from an airline with a good safety record Is not a spectator sport. There are families of passengers and crew who will look anywhere for information, including the Internet. God forbid they would end up reading some posts on this thread before the Mods can do their work.

This website gives wind and water current details.

earth :: an animated map of global wind and weather

Don't believe everything you read on wiki and don't place too much expectations on Jindalee.

Information I had years ago from friends in the RAAF was that it was "bloody amazing" to quote them directly. Yes it works....

Quote--

Operation and uses[edit]

The JORN network is operated by No. 1 Radar Surveillance Unit RAAF (1RSU). Data from the JORN sites is fed to the JORN Coordination Centre at RAAF Base Edinburgh where it is passed on to other agencies and military units. Officially the system allows the Australian Defence Force to observe all air and sea activity north of Australia to distances of 3000 km. This encompasses all of Java, Irian Jaya, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, and halfway across the Indian Ocean. Other sources put the range at 4000 km from the Australian coastline,[17] as far away as Singapore[18]
The JORN is so sensitive it is able to track planes as small as a Cessna 172 taking off and landing in East Timor 2600 km away. Current research is anticipated to increase its sensitivity by a factor of ten beyond this level. It is also reportedly able to detect stealth aircraft, as typically these are designed only to avoid detection by microwave radar.[4] Project DUNDEE[19] was a cooperative research project, with American missile defence research, into using JORN to detect missiles.[20] The JORN is anticipated to play a role in future Missile Defense Agency initiatives, detecting and tracking missile launches in Asia.[21]

OK, I'll try.

If I've understood correctly, the flight lost contact while it was crossing a fairly narrow corridor of airspace that is covered neither by Malaysian nor Vietnamese civil radar. Is this correct? If incorrect, mods, please delete post.

At this point, some catastrophic event is surmised to have occurred that caused all other forms of communication to fail. At the same time, there is as yet no evidence of an explosion, an in-flight collision or any wreckage at this point.

The coincidence that this surmised event happened during the 'radar-blind' corridor crossing is, logically, either relevant or irrelevant.

If relevant, then all sorts of wild theories, such as plane theft, become less implausible. But that nice Mr Occam and his razor tell us to look for simpler theories. The 'civil radar blind corridor' is, presumably, a fairly widely known phenomenon. Who might make use of this corridor? Various militaries, presumably. Is there evidence of illegal / unregistered / unrecorded aviation in the region and at this altitude?

If you go by the Wiki then Jindalee does not have the range to see where this crashed. Of course I expect the operational range is significantly better than indicated on Wikipedia - I guess it comes down to if the RAAF want to give that away. They might just send suggestions to the P-3Cs that are over there helping with SAR.

Jindalee does work very well, but where was it pointing / recording at the time?

And it would be beyond its advertised limit that far north. If they did track it around the Thai border, they won't admit to it.

MH370 Cargo
 

Has anyone seen any details on any cargo that MH370 may have been carrying?:rolleyes:

My understanding of how it works is it points everywhere in its arc at once.

Reading all of the various reports, I can't help but get the feeling that the Malaysian authorities are covering something up. Is it their air defence set-up's incompetence in failing to observe the unidentified trace heading towards their airspace and crossing the peninsula? Or is it that they did indeed see it but that a panicking command structure had sudden visions of their own 9/11 and the Petronas Towers, and took action that, given the consequences, they would rather not now be made public?