A good photo showing the T7 HS upper surface with the location of the NO STEP labels:

Photos: Boeing 777-31H/ER Aircraft Pictures | Airliners.net

Well found, Andrasz (I tried & failed!), but could you add/edit some arrows or labels? Image resolution means we can only see illegible markings.

Are there multiple 'No Step' signs along the entire span of the HS?

Can anyone identify where the recovered 'No Step' debris would normally be found (shape matching?).

Dean

As soon as I saw the No Step, I thought of the cargo hold.

http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/m...0cargohold.jpg

Biology
 

Someone who is more MARINE BIOLOGIST than us "TECHNICIANS" please shed some light on the absence of growth on this new part. Too many days in the water and I don't see barnacles and stuff growing on this piece. :8

Interesting call, BH!

However, the 'No Step' stencilling on the recovered debris is across one line, whereas your cargo drivebay photo signage appears (AFAICT) to be on 2.

Debris =
"No Step"

Cargo hold =
"No
Step"

Dean

A320FOX: I'm not a marine biologist (although I do have a PhD in biology), but I could imagine scenarios in which impact with the ocean & aircraft disintegration yielded leaked pools of floating oil, hydraulic fluid, residual fuel in APU feeds, etc.

If some (but not necessarily all) bits of airframe debris floated off in such pools, encrustation or colonisation by marine creatures may be significantly delayed.

Components forward of ruptured reservoirs or tanks (eg. flaperon) may become colonised, whereas empennage aft (e.g. HS) may not be.

For an authoritative answer, you would need a....marine biologist!

Additionally, Ppruners who could offer an opinion on the water-solubility or durability of such oily fluids may also provide guidance (eg. how long can oil slicks persist?)

Dean

MH17 left wing, if I remember well

https://fwtinw.dm2302.livefilestore....MH-17-268a.jpg

Hi Dean.

Would need to gt a look inside an MH hold to kk how they display it. I also note that rivet line across the piece as well...maybe not something you'd see in the hold.

Anyway, just a thought. The material resembled the hold lining from memory.

:ok:

if this indeed from a 777, the best corralation I have been able to achieve (scale and rotate in PS) places this item about 2/3 span out towards the tip of the HS, the fastener line coincident with the forward edge of the torsion box.
That would mean NO STEP is at the rear of the piece assuming the aircraft is travelling forwards.

Buster: the cargo hold 'drivebay' image you posted above clearly shows multiple stencilled "No Step" (2 separate lines) along the length of the angled panels between cargo deck floor & fuselage wall.

(Unless MAS specified a peculiar interior paint job that differs from your image!)

Dean

Teddy: could you post pics of your PS debris + HS alignments?

Important stuff!

Dean

Image
 

Not sure I'm prepared to risk insulting the intelligence of fellow professionals by doing that, for starters the only scaling information I was able to use were the step markings themselves, and the piece would in any case be off the edge of the EK 777 tail image, but a quick play in photoshop and you will see where I'm coming from.

Debris overlayed on RHS
 

Teddy, as a mere PPL-I peasant with some image-manipulation capabilities, I'll take my chances... :8 :)

I agree that it is difficult to find much detail to scale by. This is my best effort to scale and align the debris at the three positions I could find.

http://www.pprune.org/members/311051...-scaled800.png
http://www.pprune.org/members/311051...-scaled800.png

The image shows the debris overlayed on the image with 35% opacity to make it possible to "see through" the overlay. The alignment is purely visual and 2D and does NOT compensate for the foreshortening in the EK image. However, in my mind it suggests that the most likely location of these three is the most inboard.

Will post follow-up with zoom.

Keep that flak coming...

Zoom-in on overlay
 

Here is a zoomed-in image (to resolution of original debris image) that shows the inboard location:

http://www.pprune.org/members/311051...777debris1.png
http://www.pprune.org/members/311051...777debris1.png

Here is the same thing at 10% opacity that gives better opportunity to criticize my alignment ;):

http://www.pprune.org/members/311051...s1opaque10.png
http://www.pprune.org/members/311051...s1opaque10.png

(Thanks Rob for helping me to include the images.)

/Niclas

Wow!

NiclasB & Teddy - you are both *very* much overly-modest.

Teddy - your best match may be to 2/3 outboard (& NiclasB's efforts appear to replicate or at least also feature this), but Nic's near-fuselage overlay does not include the circular feature seen in the other 2 suggested locations.

This circular feature is absent in photos of the debris.

If this is the case, the forces involved in detaching the HS component from the airframe must have been sufficient to do so at the structure's strongest point - where it attaches to the fuselage (or spar-like through-tail structure).

(Ducking in advance of accusations of being an 'armchair expert'!)

Dean

Dean. I just wondered if MH (customers) or Boeing determined the printing in the hold but, it's a moot point. Teddy & NiclasB seem to have nailed it.

Buster: the only silly question is the one not asked.

I doubt that any airline would give a hoot about how the guts of an aircraft were painted (other than to save weight or perhaps to accommodate first-owner language specifics, or 'Elf & Safety' requirements?), but I hope a Boeing person might indicate if this is a customer option.

I agree re. Teddy & NiclasB.

Dean

I disagree. One piece found you don't know whether it's coincidence, statistical edge case, or average. Two pieces found can yield a significant increase in confidence of an answer, based on times and locations found combined with knowledge of prevailing currents. I agree though that it's not the smoking gun as far as precisely locating where the main wreckage lies, if there is such a thing.

Let's wait and see if they can confirm if it is from 370.

If you explore USER CP in the yellow bar at the top of the page you'll find you all have an album for uploading shots. Once in they have a url to include in posts.

Rob

Thank you
 

Answer is "maybe"

Each metal batch is close but not identical. Analysis of trace elements can be compared to fasteners coming from same batch - assuming a sister plane used them and one can be removed for comparison

I happen to be that photographer.

Here is a full resolution shot of the stab only.

http://s11.postimg.org/7ko677u2r/777_HS.jpg

P.S. No copying/distributing without my permission, thanks! Contact via PM if necessary.

Completely agree. If it would be an HL1023-6, an oversized used for repairs/reworks, that would be a "finger print" of an RNC that could be linked to a unique tail number.

re hi lok tracing
 

Sorry charlie - you need to understand how such fasteners are produced - stored and disbursed. They are ordered months/years in advance of use. They are produced and shipped perhaps on a monthly basis and put into ' temporary' storage by the boxfull. A given production shipment to Boeing of that same fastener could be split into two or three or four batches- at boeing that would be 737, 747, 767, 777 for example since some are used on every model- and part of the supplier production batch might be shipped to one of a " half" dozen suppliers just for Boeing. Other parts of that supplier production batch may well be shipped to St louis, lockheed, Airbus, etc.

But after splittting the " Boeing batch "and being sent to renton or everett or part of the batch being sent to a supplier(s) they are temporairly stored in the closest plant/assembly area before being daily put into ' nearby' to assembly rotobins- replenished at least daily or every other day dependinng on parts, assembly, production rates, etc. Some of the same fasteners in that rotobin ( for example at the ' bottom ' ) may well be three to six months old for a given model.

So a chem/sprectro analysis may well show ' family brother" fasteners of that size- batch on most any part of any plane going back from weeks to months just at Boeing- and possibly any other aerospace company in the world.
IOW- as I first stated, absent a unique flaw in that fastener or out of tolerance composition, tracing that fastener to a ' sister' ship has a VERY low but not quite ZERO probibility of being useful.:ugh:

Assuming this latest find is also from MH370, hard to imagine both bits ascended
from 15,000` or so depths. More likely these separated on impact with water. On such a premise there must be other debris afloat. What are the chances that just these two bits came off and the rest went down all in one piece. Perhaps time to call it a day, get heads out of the water, stick specs back on and start using eyeball MK1.

Further to my previous
 

with thanks to dn88 and the caveat "IF THIS IS FROM A 777"
after scaling to the 35 foot semi span of the HS, the recovered item appears to match a position immediately adjacent to the fuselage.

TR

Not sure of final paint process but is it possible to match the flaperon with this section via the paint?

Good call, Bandy.
In another life, I used to be a State Govt. forensic scientist.
Paint matching is absolutely routine.
Examples include paint fragments recovered from a suspect's clothes with that from crime scene window frames or sills, paint particles identified in car collisions (with buildings, other vehicles, victims of hit-&-runs) etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro-spectrophotometry

Should be entirely possible.
Dean

(Of course, the flaperon and wing may have been painted at different times or locations, but the paint batches involved should be traceable - they would paint a whole bunch of flaperons at the same time with the same spectroscopically-identifiable batch)

Couldn't we compare it to pics of the MH17?

Good zoom up here:

http://s52.radikal.ru/i138/1407/df/6f1e4e04c96f.jpg

and here:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...10390fb312.jpg

overview:

http://s019.radikal.ru/i641/1407/f6/4b8bb5407361.jpg


All these pictures originates from Jeroen Akkermans wealth of photograpic information on Flickr.

Snuggy - there seems to be a consensus emerging that Teddy & NiclasB have (in the words of another) 'nailed it' (if you are referring to the airframe location of the 'NO STEP' debris).

Dean

deanm

That might very well be the case. I just wanted to give new ideas into the mix.

The found part is apparently compared to an Ethiopian airframe - are we sure the markings are the same across all airframes? Same font?

Just wanted to show how a very definitively Malaysian B777 was marked. For future reference if nothing else.

Understood, Snuggy: without discussion of 'new ideas', we are stuck with only 'old ideas'!

Dean

The thread can reopen when there's some actual news

Rob