My friend who knew a lot about intelligence satellites would have said "Probably disinformation", but that wouldn't have stopped him from following up. :cool:

thcrozier,

No, our hydrophone sensors are in a towed-cable array, up to 8000 m long by 800 m wide, moving at 4.5 kts. That's the reason we need fishing boats to keep out of the way, for our mutual benefit. We don't want to tangle with their drift nets and they don't want to lose their gear.

The hydrophones have a bandwidth of less than 10 Hz to 200-300 Hz. They would certainly register the low-frequency noise from an ocean impact in the vicinity - we pick up ship's propellor noise from quite long distances.

However, as a practical matter, there are no seismic vessels operating at the moment, since we are still in the NE Monsoon. Although this is the dry season in southern Vietnam, the winds and waves are too high for us to operate - too much wave-induced noise in the sensors.

1 Group claims responsibility ....
 

A group that calls itself the Chinese Martyrs' Brigade has claimed responsibility for crashing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which has remained missing after losing contact with ground control at 1:20am on Saturday.


Chinese group claims responsibility for flight MH370?Politics?News?WantChinaTimes.com

Detachable ELTs
 

The impact-detachable, floatable external ELT has been available for turboprop aircraft and helicopters for years (i.e. look at the RCAF fleet). Had something like that been adopted for airliners, it would be worth its weight in gold right now...

Thank you, I42..


By the way, my family has been in the O&G business for 4 generations, but it was only in last month's JPT that I learned of exploration in Vietnamese waters. Obviously I haven't been paying enough attention. :)

I posted many pages ago that the lack of wreckage or even reports of an explosion in such an area, populated as it is by some of the most intensive marine traffic in the world, is the most perplexing part of this.

Every hour without a sign of wreckage deepens the mystery further.

I do not believe that terrorism is necessarily involved simply because fake passports were being used. There is a myriad of reasons why that could be so and conversations with officials in the know about such things confirms it is not necessarily unusual.

A break-up at 35,000 feet would have left a large identifiable debris field. Something would have been found by now.

That is has not suggests either they are looking in the wrong place, or the debris is in a very localised area, possibly due to the aircraft going vertically into the water.

I find it difficult to ascertain why the searchers would be looking in the wrong place, considering the plethora of primary and secondary radars that would have tracked the aircraft.

An aircraft going vertically into water at high speed would have a limited number of causes.

Pilot disorientation following some malfunction - similar to Adam Air Flight 547.

Terrorist Action - similar to 9/11

Pilot suicide - similar to Silkair 185 or Egypt Air 990

In the light of the increasingly weird lack of debris/mayday calls/ACARS info/visual sightings by witnesses of explosions or fire on a dark moonless night, the options are becoming limited.

And therein lies the difference.

Sorry if this has been answered before (looked through several pages, don't see the answer):

What is the exact extent of ATC primary radar coverage of the Gulf of Thailand?

If the transponder of MH370 was turned off or otherwise disabled at the last known position, 40 min after takeoff, but the aircraft itself remained in one piece at that point, would the aircraft still be visible on any radar afterwards?

Based on available information, is it possible that MH370 had a massive electrical failure and/or was hijacked 40 min after takeoff and eventually was ditched into the ocean, say, in South China Sea halfway between Vietnam and Philippines (1000 miles from the last known position), thus explaining why no one saw an explosion and no one seems to be able to find any debris?

P.S. And while we're at it, how far would a 777 glide if (worst case scenario) a power failure shut down all electronics and all engines at the altitude of 35000 ft and airspeed of 470 knots?

Not me. The cause will be found, but first the aircraft or wreckage must be found. In spite of all the tongue in cheek space alien Twilight Zone references here, I think those are just from people frustrated by the lack of data. Both inside and especially outside this forum, there are a lot of highly intelligent, capable, talented, and experienced people working on this; and they won't stop until they find an answer. I'm also sure that assets we can't even imagine are being brought in by various intelligence agencies.

@ Andrias - The longer it takes to find the aircraft, the harder it gets to find the cause.

3db 3db, I messed up as well. I kept writing 43khz, when I should have written 37.5khz. I work off the top of my head too much without double checking. Anyway, thanks.

There was a suggestion made regarding rewarding fishermen for finding pieces of debris.

How about going one further? Supposedly they have video of the two (or more?) passengers flying with the stolen passports. How about publishing their photos, and offering a reward to anyone who can identify them?

If they were non-terrorists simply attempting to immigrate, then most likely they had family members or friends who knew it. Even if they were smugglers, someone might well recognize them who knew what they were involved in.

Identifying the men and ruling out (or ruling in) their possible link to terrorism could help to narrow in on what actually happened.

The possible glide distance would be approximately 20 times the altitude, hence about 20*6 = 120 miles but not at that speed, to achieve this maximum glide distance pilots would have to lower the speed.

They are just going on every possible lead, as would anyone. Soon, as the search grid grows, they'll simply draw a circle centered about the last known position and range based on the fuel remaining and search.

Disintegration in flight might be an explanation but no comms? One of the steps in an emergency is to 'call'. But then again, sometimes in the heat of an emergency, pilots may be too engrossed in handling the emergency. For the crash at Bagram, Afghanistan last year, the pilots only called out 'Weight' at the last moment before they crashed.

My best guess now:

Flight experienced some total electrics failure, somehow inclusive of batteries. No possibility of comms (perhaps 777 pilots can share on this possibility). Tried to turn back and some how mishandled due to disorientation and descended rapidly enough to lose radar line of sight/range. Somehow aircraft leveled off at low levels (no radar contact) and tracked in some direction until they crashed. Crash site no where near the last known position.

- one problem with this scenario is total E plus batt failure. Again, not sure the set up on 777 and how likely is this.
- another problem is if they fly low enough to evade radar, then those on the surface should have seen something.

Just trying to connect the dots:
a) loss of radar contact very quickly from FL350
b) no comms
c) no debris field in the region of the last known position

That depends on the cause. If they find the FDR and CVR all could be revealed, as it was in AF447.

ffs once and for all..

There are essentially four common types of ATC surveillance. Primary radar requires a return off the skin of the aeroplane = heaps of power out for a tiny reflected return = very limited range (< 100 nm). All other forms of surveillance (secondary radar/ADS-Broadcast/ADS-Contract) require a transponder in the aeroplane in order to get s return. SSR and ADS-B are ground based, so they are limited by line-of-sight rules (i.e range ~ 300nm), ADS-C is via satellite return and has essentially world wide coverage. No return on anything except Primary simply means the transponder is u/s

Have a look on the Flight Radar print out, a number of acft where in the general area, I find it hard to believe that between these aircraft and the number of boats around, no-one saw the supposed 'explosion / disentegration'. It does make me wonder if this was a controlled deviation and deliberate act which would mean that the search area could be out by hundreds if not thousands of Kim's. Surely if it had been a technical problem the Malaysian would have some info to back this up, even the Air France incident resulted in ACARS error messages being sent back to maintenance.

Why all the speculation about military radar showing the acft plunging to the sea whilst authorities denying all knowledge. The total lack of witness accounts and reliable radar traces and an apparent flow of misinformation makes me very suspicious of what has happened here.

What's this businessman doing @ 1.45 in the morning?

In a case like this, how long does it usually take to find out what sort of cargo might have been on board?

With 50 years of flying experience and 15 of it in South East Asia the loss of MH370 worries me. I know the Andaman Sea, South China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand like the back of my hand.

I can not believe a B777 can be 'lost' without trace. There are many Radar installations in the area, both Civil and Military that could have been tracking the a/c. I am not surprised the Chinese Foreign Minister is frustrated and becoming impatient with the Malaysians due to questions being asked but being fobbed off.

After watching the latest press conference I am concerned the Malaysian DGCA is 'hiding' something.