Bud

Interesting article.

I was looking at some photos of the media at RAAF Base Pearce the other day, all quietly lined up and waiting patiently on the edge of the grass next to the runway with one military person watching over them. Same out the front of the base. Amazing what happens to the media when the law is laid down to them at the start :rolleyes:

Marty
 

I haven't seen much true wavering from the position that 200WNW of Penang was the last trace of MH370. Someone here posted a link to a Chinese paper which reproduced the military primary radar data as shown to Chinese relatives. I took a copy but no longer have the actual link.

It all depends if you believe there is sufficient evidence that the aircraft tracked west of the Malacca Straits, or whether you want to believe it could have been a ghost plane after a failed attempt to head to a nearby airport or perhaps KL.. Either way, I think Capt Kremin's point stands that a ghost plane scenario will have been determined to have been either true or false depending on the location of the final six pings. As we don't have that information, we can only surmise that investigators have come to the position that the diversion was a deliberate act because they do have that information, which would probably show that a direct heading south in a straight line had to have had human input and could not be simply a ghost plane flying itself after a catastrophe.

Time will eventually tell, and even though the search is daunting, I feel we will get some answers, even if not all of them. We must go wherever the evidence leads.

All 'speculation' until MH370 debris found

This.

Doppler accuracy
 

Doppler shift has not to be regarded in relation to the carrier frequency (1,6 Ghz) but in relation to the baseband bandwith, i.e the part of the signal that carries the payload.

5kHz is a number I found for channel spacing in Inmarsat-C. So with a doppler shift in the range of 1khz, speed accuracy should be pretty good.

I believe the "beancounter" comment was made in respect of the ULBs (Underwater Locator Beacons) attached to the FDR and CVR.

Given that those are beacons to help in locating said objects underwater (the clue's in the name), the comment is entirely relevant.

Bobman84

yup waiting for the weather to clear. Its pretty ordinary weather when the Australian Navy withdraws from the area to calmer waters until it clears.

Its pretty clear from the reports and my understanding of the area, the more assets you use and the more you look in these parts the more you will find, it's a really wild part of the ocean with winds and currents that run unrestricted by any land around the world.
it will be carrying years of debris that has fallen off ships or swept off beaches

Hardly anybody ever goes down that way for fun or commerce, except the crazy round the world yachting crazies and they have a horizon of less than a couple of miles. Usually the first they know there is a large piece of debris seatainer or such like is when they hit it. :sad:

IMHO they are better off concentrating searching for a pinger.

And I hope they haven't given up on the Northern end.

I'm pretty sure they have given up on the Northern end, Gaunty.

The radar plots after the turn back are patchy. What is the latest info they have on this with all the combined Radar. There have been many versions. What was their first heading or track immediately after turn back?

"Its pretty ordinary weather when the Australian Navy withdraws from the area to calmer waters until it clears."


The Captain has seen action all around the world, she knows what she is doing.

Finding things on the bottom ...
 

The Towed Pinger Locators (TPL's) are to detect the Underwater Locator Beacons (ULB's) - one attached to the DFDR, and one attached to the CVR. They have a guaranteed battery life of 30 days, but the manufacturer will probably ensure that is extended to about 40 days. In the AF447 case, neither worked, and one was never found.

The ROV option is only useful when you have found something worth taking a look at. Initially, and if the ULB's are not located, a dedicated underwater search plan needs to be drawn up based on the best information available. In the MH370 case, the area selected to search will probably not be less than that which was searched using Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV's) to find AF447, in which case this whole operation will take not weeks, but many months if not a year or more.

Why? The backtracking of surface floating debris is not a precise science, and the "butterfly effect" created by spurious vortexes that spin stuff off and then repeat the process, tends to confuse the issue.

Don't hold your breath.:sad:

That's what I'm sticking with at the moment! :ok:

I see that Inmarsat have used a speed of 450 kts for their calculation. Assuming that a 777 operates at 0.84 or there abouts that equates to a TAS closer to 500kts.

How would that affect the arcs that they have published and how far down those arcs the aircraft might have flown.

Absolutely false. As mentioned before, it is simply impossible to recover any physically overwritten digital information.

The aircraft did not fly down the arc. The arc represents the possible range of locations when the final 'ping' was received.

Howard Hughes and others
 

I'm going to lift a couple of sections out of Capt Kremin's previous post here because it's evident that investigators will already know, based on the exact location of the previous six pings, whether the excursion south was likely to have been accidental or deliberate.


In the case of the "Ghost plane" scenario the aircraft, after it turned WNW would have been either tracking to a programmed FMC waypoint or it would have been in a lateral AP mode referenced on magnetic north, HDG or TRK, it does not really matter. If tracking to the FMC waypoint, once it reached it, it would have reverted to HDG.

For the aircraft to track direct to the area of the last known ping and the current search area, there are only two ways to do it. One is a programmed FMC waypoint and the other is someone flying the aircraft via the HDG or TRK button and taking into account the 30-35 degree change in magnetic variation encountered along the route.


His point is that the track revealed by the pings will show either a direct straight path, or one which curves due to reversionary AP modes and changes in magnetic variation. His post is complete with charts etc and is currently number 7541. Well worth reading.

A straight path would indicate a deliberate diversion. Since investigators are labelling the route deviation a deliberate diversion, it would be reasonable on this basis to rule out a ghost plane - and it doesn't really matter from which exact point the diversion south commenced, though his reasoning is based on the point 200nm WNW of Penang.

Has anyone asked the question as to whether the Malaysians had been warned about potential terrorist activity on this flight?

Journos - perhaps a good question to ask at the next news conference.

...but magically only the autopilot kept working?

The worst type of terrorism would be to make an aeroplane vanish, then do it again.

Pilot suicide is an easy way out for the Authorities.

Slow decompression ala Helios has to be a strong possibility perhaps with one last confused pilot input or passenger input befiore she went down. Smouldering fire may have the same effect and take out systems also.

The turning off of systems has not been adequately explained, black box may do so.

Blake777

I totally agree with the conclusion, that once established whether the flight path was a path of constant magnetic heading or was a great circle, then it can be inferred if it was deliberate action.

Captain Kremin visualized that very well.

I don't agree that we can conjecture yet, that the investigators have already established whether the flight path was constant heading or great circle.

I was always wondering why only the last section of the tracks in the AMSA maps are depicted. I think those paths are only symbolic because a path of constant heading would appear to come out of direction of Diego Garcia. NTSB doesn't want to complicate the matter to the public by explaining magnetic deviation and rhumb lines and that's the reason for only displaying symbolic tracks.

Not so absolute...

While solid state media cannot retain overwritten information, hard disk drives CAN retain forensically retrievable information. That is why the US Dept of Defense has had long-standing protocols for multiple repeated overwrites of HDDs to completely erase classified information.