Post 8089
Wouldn't the initial SAR actions rest with Vietnamese ATC?

Willow

Is there a gap between what countries want to be able to achieve re SAR and realistic capabilities?

Yes

Is it likely that any sane country is going to attempt to maintain a SAR capability that can rescue mid Atlantic/Indian Ocean etc?

No, because the cost is silly. If you have that kind of money to throw around then spend it on something worthwhile.

In over a hundred years of civil aviation this has happened once. Worldwide SAR cover is unaffordable, in fact beyond 200nm offshore is unaffordable.

There is a price on life, only idiots say otherwise, and sometimes bad :mad: happens.

Why is the MH370 R-R engine monitoring data pushed away out of sight?
 

Well they probably could, retrospectively, in the case of a normal flight - my understanding is that the EHM system stores half-hourly data snapshots for transmission once an ACARS link becomes available again.

But in this case, the third-hand quote attibuted to the anonymous 777 captain

is clearly inaccurate, albeit perhaps inadvertently.

Perhaps that's why the mods deleted it?

Ummm, it's not that difficult.:hmm:

Agreements have been made as to what should be done, but the actual responses haven't been defined sufficiently under the current Annex 12.

i.e. Annex 12 states what should be done, but the mechanics of how to do it have not been spelled out as every incident is different.

More or less, anyway.

Plus the plane is still missing.

Repeated FL350 request
 

CNN have a 777 captain's take on what may have happened. Interesting (and entirely innocent) explanation of the repeated mention by the FO to Malaysian ATC of FL350, that it may have been a gentle nudge that they'd requested a higher FL in their flight plan and they wanted a further climb. I've heard this type of nudge many times as US-bound aircraft climb out from Heathrow towards the Welsh coast and get levelled off below their desired initial cruising altitude. Overall the article is another one inclined to a fire/malfunction scenario.

Opinion: How mechanical problem could have downed Flight 370 - CNN.com

[ I see the url has just been posted above ]

FWIW it's a common call anywhere. I'd take no notice if another level was not available unless the pilot stated he would be unable to legally make his destination

Though Inmarsat analysis undoubtedly have been key to home in on a crash site, the Doppler method might not tell the full story. A jitter assessment would have to be performed on ping return clock rather than on return data. Maybe the sat guys here know how much raw data, or data about the raw data, is logged?

There is no wing to wing balance system, either automatic or manual.
Balancing the fuel is done via using one tank to feed both engines until fuel in wingtanks is equal. Then it is wingtank to engine again. You cannot transfer fuel from one wingtank to the other.

Flight MH370: Pilot in wrong state of mind to fly - friend - World - NZ Herald News

I hope the Herald checked this man's credentials.

Driver Airframe,

It's very different over longer ranges.

Geomagnetic South Pole
 

Thanks to A69 (*8052) and flt001 (*8068) for posting the link to the AAIB data.

A lot of posters have stated that the autopilot in TRK mode would follow a constant magnetic heading.

The geomagnetic South pole is now at about 80 S, 107.5 E.

Magnetic Poles

If the heading had been set to due South (magnetic), that would seem to give a track somewhere between the 400 KTAS and 450 KTAS curves on the last AAIB figure:

https://www.facebook.com/17856688885...614509/?type=1

MAGVAR is about zero over Kuala Lumpur, and increases to around 20 E at the last positions shown on the AAIB routes. For MH 180, that would favor the 450 KTAS line.

Historical Magnetic Declination | ngdc.noaa.gov

Former chairman of NTSB speaks out
 

Live interview with former chairman of NTSB James Hall on Al Jazeera.
James Hall is chairman of Hall Associates.
Context was accident investigation

Summary
Strange that no confirmation of wreckage.
"If wreckage had been found, that information has to be made available to the families and then made available in a responsible manner via media to worldwide audience watching this disaster playout"

"Unfortunate that Malaysian govt is not competent to handle an investigation of this magnitude"

6 underwater investigations he dealt with took 6 weeks to get underwater vehicles to the known crash location, hard to put a time frame on this investigation as aircraft location is not yet known.

"In a normal investigation (by transportation bureaus such as in Australia and China) investigators not politicians handle investigation, then as information is identified it becomes public so it is a transparent investigation so the world knows that the facts being put forward are the correct facts."

"In this investigation facts come forward only to be corrected, its no wonder the families have lost confidence."
Ends

ABC Australia report families held a protest at Malaysian embassy in Beijing, demanding more information, they clashed with police.
Id be doing the same, there needs to be an explanation of how the authorities have determined that there are no survivors?

Glad someone calls a spade a spade !

Inmarsat
 

Normal telecoms (digital side of the sat modem at the earth station) would not yield anything useful. It is possible the raw analogue RF was being digitised and captured for diagnostic purposes. I guess that their business model sees them handle very short messages. If a message isn't received, they won't get a real-time complaint, but a complaint many hours or days later. It would be a useful function to be able to go back and tell the customer that their signal wasn't relayed because it was off-freq/garbled/too-weak/overmodulated/oh-it-really-was-our-fault/whatever.

Sat earth stations have very precise frequency and time standards. Incoming RF would be downcoverted to an Intermediate Frequency (IF) that would be supplied to the sat modem for demodulation. If this IF was digitised by a SDR receiver tied to the station frequency standards, then reconstruction of the original analogue waveform arriving at the earth station would be possible.

The analysis of this waveform has been the rocket science here. I would struggle to separate doppler shift from other sources of frequency drift, especially with so little data to work with. There would have had to have been some serious maths at work, coupled with data from other aircraft and detailed historical information about the exact beam coverage patterns of their sat.

Another possibility is that deeper analysis found some too-weak-to-demodulate-so-not-initially-noticed signal on the "IF-tapes" for their POR bird. The IOR plus POR recordings would then give triangulation.

Thanks for the thorough explanation US. Do you mean 24/7 sampling at 3+ GHz could be taking place in the sat? I understand the reasoning but doubt the practicalities.

Driver Airframe in post 8101 queries the effect of altitude and speed on amount of fuel required to fly a set distance.

From Boeing Data for B777-200ER.
Long Range Cruise. Engines RR Trent 892
All up Weight at start of distance, 200.0 Tonnes
Time in hours and minutes, fuel burn in 1,000s kg

Distance Flight levels
(nm) 100 200 300 400
Fuel Time Fuel Time Fuel Time Fuel Time
600 11.5 1.50 9.1 1.37 7.5 1.28 6.6 1.22
1200 23.3 3.18 18.8 3.12 15.6 2.52 13.9 2.38
2000 38.5 6.08 31.2 3.21 26.4 4.45 23.5 4.19

What happened to the ship that was just a few hours away from the wreckage sighted by RAAF ..turned back due weather?


ABC reporter Wed morning;
80km surface wind yesterday.
Seas eased and less rain today.
NZ Orion heading off first.
HMAS Success would be probably first ship to scene if something sighted by air.
Ocean Shield heading from Sydney today with "black box finder"

China and Malaysia clearly want to just close this book, why are other nations investing so much $ in finding the Malay mess?

ghw78


Easier to read?

1. Because there is a moral obligation to the victims and their families.

2. Because there is a practical (and economic) incentive: modern airliners should not just disappear. Knowing how one has will allow attempts to be made to avoid future repetitions.