AUS ADV Ocean Shield has been sent to the area, and has actually reported a pinger signal...

Marine Traffic

It has a Remus 6000 onboard (6000m depth) and a Triton XLS (4000m depth), both could be outfitted with a pinger sensor.

They also have at least one UUV onboard, which are completely autonomous, the Bluefin 21 has a working depth of 4500m. The US Navy provided a B21
http://blogs-images.forbes.com/bruce...724abcf7_b.jpg

This ship, the Swire Seabed, is the one that recovered the AF447 and the Atlas rocket engines.

Swire Seabed

NBC News Reports: Malaysia’s prime minister says the missing plane was airborne for seven hours and only could have been taken down with someone at the controls.

We all know this has become a criminal investigation, where the passangers are no longer under investigation, but the crew are.

Given the two media announcements above one would be led to conclude that the prime suspects are the crew.

So it seems pointless at this juncture to hypothesise on fire and technical mulfunction.

The question must be, on what basis of factual or circumstantial evidence or a combination of both, did the Malaysian authorities decide to pursue this as a criminal investigation.

Folks keep confusing RF and Audio - both have frequency
 

Quite right. A bit more explanation:

Audio signals, like those from the pinger, are *sound* - they are carried by pressure waves in a fluid.

RF (radio frequency) signals are radio - they are carried by electromagnetic waves.

One kind of detector (a microphone, such as a hydrophone) picks up audio. A different kind (a radio) picks up RF.

Occasionally, the electronics in an audio system picks up RF signals - such as when a nearby transmitter garbles your stereo. But... that is very unlikely here - I'd say impossible given the equipment the Chinese are using. Also, the very low frequency radio transmissions to submarines don't transmit in 10 millisecond bursts, while the marine locators (ULB) do.

I guess it must have been dawn or Daylight (looks like the sunrise was about 23:14 z the actual day at 25S 101 E ) last ping 00:11z if I remeber it Wright, and the partial 00:19z ?

That's not the point. The point is that, if big boys get to the spot and find no trace of a ping, this could still be considered a legitimate finding and absence of the signal could be explained away.

I doubt that the Chinese have access to any useful sat data that is not available to anyone else.

In the light of the recent revelation that MH370 never appeared on Indonesian radars, it looks more likely than ever that the 1827 UTC turn from the Doppler chart was to the northwest, and Indian Ocean is a very expensive dead end.

If there is at least one Western sub in the area there will be a Chinese one. Which can explain the handheld detector video and random shop course change to that area before ping received. It's a cover for the sub detecting it...

The UK does not have to cover up the sub they sent as it's about to retire and fitted with old tech. Hence the publicity about it being there being allowed/put out in the media. It literally is our least upgraded Nuclear sub we could have sent... I bet the Chinese sent thier best seeing the vested interest they have in finding this..

AIS image from last night. (24 hours or so ago)

http://i.imgur.com/dPwslXa.jpg

pinger versus transponder
 

I would be extremely skeptical of the Chinese operatng their hand held Teledyne detector receiver. The avionics acoustic pinger that is currently used has not changed much in the last 50 years and although it can supposedly operate for 30 days, I doubt whether it can be detected outside a 500m range. Diver's bells also use this safety equipment in the form a transponder on the same 37.5Khz freq which will give a range and bearing which a pinger will not do, when interrogated but with more range but I have never seen one operate in ideal conditions beyond 600m.

Silver Pegasus

There are likely to be a few subs in the search area that we don't know about, but this press article does show that such Chinese assets could logistically easily be on site. It would explain the apparent success of surface hydrophones and iphone ear buds!

Hidden Dragon on the high seas: China's deployment of a nuclear-powered attack submarine in the Indian Ocean sign als the beginning of its strategic encirclement of India : DEFENCE - India Today

@Hamster
"In the light of the recent revelation that MH370 never appeared on Indonesian radars".

Not so recent....The Indonesians denied that it was seen by their radar on March 19!
I am interested to know why if you didnt believe the Indonesian's then, why do you believe it now??
Not being impertinent, I am genuinely interested!

glenbrook I still maintain the the 24m object "awash" with water (you need to be able to see detail to refer to something in this way) was a wing which had sunk by the time they tried to find it...

Could the Inmarsat data be an illusion?
 

All routes other than the southern arc appear to be ruled out by the Inmarsat data analysis of the pings between MH370 and the satellite. It seems that the Inmarsat analysis is accepted as correct and irrefutable by those in charge of the search. However, there are some in this forum who think MH370 is not in the South Indian Ocean and if that is the case then an explanation is needed as to how the Inmarsat analysis could be illusory.

So, is it possible that the MH370 pings could have been generated from an altogether different fixed location (Kuala Lumpur?) or variable locations (from MH370?) by generating the handshake data and appropriate signal characteristics to give the Inmarsat perceived (calculated) MH370 locations? I am not asking if that would be difficult which I'm sure that it would be. I am asking if that is impossible.

Are there any other explanations?

JSmithDTV:
One of the problems with multinational teams such as this is language used where for some of the people involved, English is not their first language. Hanging on how a journalist, politician or anyone else has phrased something is really making something quite often out of nothing.

You do not need to see detail to refer to something in this way - awash simply means just level or just above the surface level of the water which is pretty obvious that object was. Use of that word does not carry the inference you have associated with it regarding the detail needed.

Could the Chinese report be a PR stunt (again)? I am by no means an expert and I guess this will be honored by being deleted from the mods - but detecting a plane everyone is looking for since a month with a rubber dingy, what seems a hydrophone on a pole and - seriously - iPod earphones? Apart from noise interferences from the dingy's motor (and it might be not in that frequency, no idea) but I would expect you want to wear a serious pair of over the ear headphones.

Regarding the two locations - possibly Voice and Data recorder at different locations (or sound carried from one to the other location but given the distance rather unlikely) - anyone daring to make an educated guess to the implication of such a find?

lynw The comments were not from a journalist, they were by AMSA.

There is no way from the grainy images we plebs were provided that you can say something is "awash" with water. This is a term used for something that is bouyant, but not completely floating on the surface. It's a very descript term that implies they have higher res. images than what we were shown, likely also in colour...

Spread spectrum underwater location beacon system
Includes transponder mode to activate pinger.
The process gain in a spread spectrum system can easily be 10, 100 or more increasing the range by those amounts.

Finding Things Underwater
 

I am not an Aviator (Ianaa). However, I have spent many years trying to find long tubular objects underwater. First of all you need to know that every military naval vessel does a BT drop at least every 24 hours. These drops allow plotting of convergence zones for the local area. So, if I were for looking for a known frequency at a known signal strength at a known depth (the bottom) at a datum that I might have, the first thing I would do is deploy a device away from my ship. Why? Surface vessels pretty much suck at trying to find subsurface targets because they are too noisy. So using a PIB is a good idea. Get away from the ship and try some soundings based on convergence zones that may be calculated on a known datum. So, while it may seem crude, I thing the Chinese are being innovative with the equipment they have available. Regarding the posturing, the guys and gals that are doing the search are working to the best of their professional ability. The posturing happens at the High Command/Political level. The folks on the aircraft and the ships are just doing their jobs to the best of their ability.

Re pingers:

this British laboratory's "sound absorption calculator"
Calculation of absorption of sound in seawater

suggests only ~ 5 db/km signal loss at 37.5 khz
and the signal starts out >100 db
which to me says a sophisticated portable instrument on the surface might very well hear those things.

so the Chinese dinghy idea doesn't defy physics.

I would say about half the posts to this thread have been deleted since #1.

A lot of the deletions are because the topic has been debated to death 100's of posts / pages ago and people are too lazy to search first.

Some seem to have been driven by geopolitical concerns, defamation concerns etc

Some of the more insane theories (aliens, gods) etc get shot down

I wouldn't worry too much there are still 10,000 posts to read :cool:

Has detected signals like those omitted by Black boxes.

1st signal held for 2 hrs and 20 minutes

2nd detection held for 13 minutes but more important two "distinct" signals were heard.

They haven't found the aircraft yet and he stressed this so to use the info sensibly
until the signals could be verified.

Depth here is 4,500 metres !

Angus Huston Says;

2 pingers heard simultaneously and they think its from both boxes
Pingers heard for 2 hours + and then after the turn of the vessel it was lost and picked up again and heard for 13 mins.