AF 447 Search to resume
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Originally Posted by teleport
How about using secondary navigational inputs on GPS based data?
All GPS knows is ground speed.
{o.o}
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Many eyes
takata remarked
This brings to mind the many eyes approach several groups are using to find interesting bits in huge volumes of data. If the bottom profiles were released to the public for processing and scrutiny both the state of the art and the chance of discovery of "bits" in large amounts of data improve.
If a prize is offered for finding parts of the plane it might result in cheaper and faster results.
{^_^}
Hi Bluestar51,
Quote:
Slightly off the current topic, is it possible that they have found some of the wreckage with their current search, but because of logistical restraints they are unable to explore those sights?
Quite on topic!
They might have found something without actually knowing it (further data analysis may later reveal some possible traces of wreckage) but I don't think that logistical restraints would have been an issue. Those vessels were fully equiped for recovering any wreckage, or simply to verify any doubtfull spot at will.
Quote:
Slightly off the current topic, is it possible that they have found some of the wreckage with their current search, but because of logistical restraints they are unable to explore those sights?
Quite on topic!
They might have found something without actually knowing it (further data analysis may later reveal some possible traces of wreckage) but I don't think that logistical restraints would have been an issue. Those vessels were fully equiped for recovering any wreckage, or simply to verify any doubtfull spot at will.
If a prize is offered for finding parts of the plane it might result in cheaper and faster results.
{^_^}
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Many Eyes
JD-EE,
Yes! Many eyes looking at miles and miles of traverses. What anomalies might they find? Start with some of the contributors to this thread: engineers, scientists, pilots, masters. Bright, interested, trainable, and likely capable of the meticulous effort required. Possibly with available time.
Two problems: First, training volunteers to be able to recognize substance from noise then providing them with appropriate software and administrative infrastructure. Second, willingness of "owner" authorities to release the raw data and manage/filter the input from a Many Eyes collaborative approach...
The first problem can be solved. The second is not so easy, though eventually I hope the bathymetric data gained during the extensive search in this portion of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge will be released to the world's geophysics and oceanographic communities and be stored in the open-access international libraries for such data.
It could be that the authorities are already talking to the academic community and to those with experience with side-scanning sonar to provide more eyes.
What worries me, though, is that there may be blank spots in the already-acquired data (too deep, too fuzzy, out-of-range, dark blue, etc.) and that the search misses the hull by an unfortunate circumstance of probability. 95% of the sea floor is not 100% of the sea floor. Like pingers, not there if you don't hear it.
In any case,
Now if I can just find the right address...
JD-EE, it's theoretically do-able but perhaps culturally impossible. The world-wide culture of such investigations is more accustomed to locked hangars, yellow do-not-cross tape, tightly controlled evidence, very expert input, and very careful deliberation. Not a bad culture, mind you, just one unused to the public eye or, what would be perhaps more disconcerting, to public participation.
GB
Yes! Many eyes looking at miles and miles of traverses. What anomalies might they find? Start with some of the contributors to this thread: engineers, scientists, pilots, masters. Bright, interested, trainable, and likely capable of the meticulous effort required. Possibly with available time.
Two problems: First, training volunteers to be able to recognize substance from noise then providing them with appropriate software and administrative infrastructure. Second, willingness of "owner" authorities to release the raw data and manage/filter the input from a Many Eyes collaborative approach...
The first problem can be solved. The second is not so easy, though eventually I hope the bathymetric data gained during the extensive search in this portion of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge will be released to the world's geophysics and oceanographic communities and be stored in the open-access international libraries for such data.
It could be that the authorities are already talking to the academic community and to those with experience with side-scanning sonar to provide more eyes.
What worries me, though, is that there may be blank spots in the already-acquired data (too deep, too fuzzy, out-of-range, dark blue, etc.) and that the search misses the hull by an unfortunate circumstance of probability. 95% of the sea floor is not 100% of the sea floor. Like pingers, not there if you don't hear it.
In any case,
Dear Mr. Bea,
We have organised an ad-hoc team of 34 highly-qualified volunteers willing to visually review your AF447 search data meter by meter, in case an anomaly or find has been overlooked during your initial traverses. Eleven are active or retired air transport pilots, seven are electrical and structural engineers, six are naval or merchant marine officers, four are computer scientists, and the remainder are just plain smart people. If you would post your raw data to an accessible FTP site, we will take a look at it in great time-consuming detail and let you know if we find anything remarkable.
Sincerely yours,
Great Bear
(or JD-EE, but I don't want to put words in your mouth.)
We have organised an ad-hoc team of 34 highly-qualified volunteers willing to visually review your AF447 search data meter by meter, in case an anomaly or find has been overlooked during your initial traverses. Eleven are active or retired air transport pilots, seven are electrical and structural engineers, six are naval or merchant marine officers, four are computer scientists, and the remainder are just plain smart people. If you would post your raw data to an accessible FTP site, we will take a look at it in great time-consuming detail and let you know if we find anything remarkable.
Sincerely yours,
Great Bear
(or JD-EE, but I don't want to put words in your mouth.)
JD-EE, it's theoretically do-able but perhaps culturally impossible. The world-wide culture of such investigations is more accustomed to locked hangars, yellow do-not-cross tape, tightly controlled evidence, very expert input, and very careful deliberation. Not a bad culture, mind you, just one unused to the public eye or, what would be perhaps more disconcerting, to public participation.
GB
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auv-ee's post #1388 is well worth keeping as a detailed description of the operation of AUV's similar to those deployed from the "Seabed Worker" and as a comparison with the equivalent towed side-scan sonar that was employed by the "Anne Candies".
Thanks for taking the time to enlighten everyone on the operation of the AUV's, and it is easy to relate your description to that of the Phase 3 search just concluded.
mm43
Thanks for taking the time to enlighten everyone on the operation of the AUV's, and it is easy to relate your description to that of the Phase 3 search just concluded.
mm43
Last edited by mm43; 5th Jun 2010 at 00:08. Reason: changed a word
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auv-ee,
A couple of very uninformed questions (hence the need to ask).
The oil industry has a fleet of ROVs like the 12 that are working on the Gulf spill. They're working at just shy of a mile down now. Is that their limit, or can they work deep enough to be effective at the AF-447 site?
I realize that they're tethered and that would probably add more difficulty. Anything insurmountable?
I guess I've been thinking along the lines of a couple of ships controlling a handful of these each for a very deliberate visual search that, if nothing else might rule out areas.
A couple of very uninformed questions (hence the need to ask).
The oil industry has a fleet of ROVs like the 12 that are working on the Gulf spill. They're working at just shy of a mile down now. Is that their limit, or can they work deep enough to be effective at the AF-447 site?
I realize that they're tethered and that would probably add more difficulty. Anything insurmountable?
I guess I've been thinking along the lines of a couple of ships controlling a handful of these each for a very deliberate visual search that, if nothing else might rule out areas.
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Crowdsourcing
In the search for Steve Fossett a "many eyeballs" method was used. I recall it was partly successful in that several wrecks were found but from other flights. I recall that one of the frustrations of the crowdsource group was that the data they were given was not in the SW area where it was believed his flight path went. Instead the data was only available due W of his departure airfield. Sure enough the wreckage finally turned up SW.
In the AF case I would expect something like the SETI@home project would be a better fit.
Wikip. quote...
In the AF case I would expect something like the SETI@home project would be a better fit.
Wikip. quote...
On September 7, Google Inc. helped the search for the aviator through its connections to contractors that provide satellite imagery for its Google Earth software. Richard Branson, a British billionaire and friend of Fossett, said he and others were coordinating efforts with Google to see if any of the high-resolution images might include Fossett's aircraft.
On September 8, the first of a series of new high-resolution imagery from DigitalGlobe was made available via the Amazon Mechanical Turk beta website so that users could flag potential areas of interest for searching, in what is known as crowdsourcing. By September 11, up to 50,000 people had joined the effort, scrutinizing more than 300,000 278-foot-square squares of the imagery. Peter Cohen of Amazon believed that by September 11, the entire search area had been covered at least once. Amazon's search effort was shut down the week of October 29, without any measurable success.[58][59] Maj. Cynthia Ryan later commented that the 'crowdsourcing' was more of a hindrance than a help. She said that persons purporting to have seen the aircraft on the Mechanical Turk or have special knowledge clogged her email during critical days of the search, and for even months afterward. Many of the so-called 'sightings' proved to be images of CAP aircraft flying search grids, or simple mistaken artifacts of old images. Additionally, psychics flooded the search base in Minden with predictions of where the aviator could be found. Ryan got the majority of these calls personally, often at her home, in the middle of the night. One man from Canada was particularly persistent with daily calls to Ryan, interfering with her press briefings. Ryan requested her Incident Commander to issue a 'cease and desist' request, backed up by the RCMP if necessary. Ryan noted that all the 'crowdsource' emails, phone calls and mail was taken seriously - which added to the burden by USAF specialists who were brought in specifically to address that task - and that each was reviewed no matter how outrageous they may have seemed at first glance. In retrospect, the 'crowdsource' effort was "not ready for prime time" according to Maj Ryan
On September 8, the first of a series of new high-resolution imagery from DigitalGlobe was made available via the Amazon Mechanical Turk beta website so that users could flag potential areas of interest for searching, in what is known as crowdsourcing. By September 11, up to 50,000 people had joined the effort, scrutinizing more than 300,000 278-foot-square squares of the imagery. Peter Cohen of Amazon believed that by September 11, the entire search area had been covered at least once. Amazon's search effort was shut down the week of October 29, without any measurable success.[58][59] Maj. Cynthia Ryan later commented that the 'crowdsourcing' was more of a hindrance than a help. She said that persons purporting to have seen the aircraft on the Mechanical Turk or have special knowledge clogged her email during critical days of the search, and for even months afterward. Many of the so-called 'sightings' proved to be images of CAP aircraft flying search grids, or simple mistaken artifacts of old images. Additionally, psychics flooded the search base in Minden with predictions of where the aviator could be found. Ryan got the majority of these calls personally, often at her home, in the middle of the night. One man from Canada was particularly persistent with daily calls to Ryan, interfering with her press briefings. Ryan requested her Incident Commander to issue a 'cease and desist' request, backed up by the RCMP if necessary. Ryan noted that all the 'crowdsource' emails, phone calls and mail was taken seriously - which added to the burden by USAF specialists who were brought in specifically to address that task - and that each was reviewed no matter how outrageous they may have seemed at first glance. In retrospect, the 'crowdsource' effort was "not ready for prime time" according to Maj Ryan
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Hi,
Just a remind
Mind you it is associations of the victims families and they requested (and continue to request) to have a observator from the associations for be part (as observator only) of the investigation processus.
The BEA (I think by the mouth of the french transport minister Bussereau) give them a hard refusal.
So you can allway dream to have a bit of data from the BEA
JD-EE, it's theoretically do-able but perhaps culturally impossible. The world-wide culture of such investigations is more accustomed to locked hangars, yellow do-not-cross tape, tightly controlled evidence, very expert input, and very careful deliberation. Not a bad culture, mind you, just one unused to the public eye or, what would be perhaps more disconcerting, to public participation.
Mind you it is associations of the victims families and they requested (and continue to request) to have a observator from the associations for be part (as observator only) of the investigation processus.
The BEA (I think by the mouth of the french transport minister Bussereau) give them a hard refusal.
So you can allway dream to have a bit of data from the BEA
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Originally Posted by JD-EE
This brings to mind the many eyes approach several groups are using to find interesting bits in huge volumes of data. If the bottom profiles were released to the public for processing and scrutiny both the state of the art and the chance of discovery of "bits" in large amounts of data improve.
I expect that the searchers are looking for patterns of targets that might be different from the surrounding rock fields. They likely got their local experience by investigating some of the early clusters and discovering they were rocks. We know that the ROV was used to investigate some targets. It seems likely that they learned what not to waste time on. That sort of knowledge is difficult to pass on. (Of course the flip side is that something ignored could have been debris.)
This search is not like the Fossett search, where color images can be scanned for white metal objects in a desert setting. The sonar images are composed of just varying reflection strength. While it's not as bad as looking at long range radar data that is just little blips and clutter, in some ways it is more like that than looking at a photo.
Perhaps someone will comment who has more experience than me in reading high clutter sidescan images.
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jimbeetle wrote:
That depends. There are a number of ROVs world wide that are capable of operating at 6000m or 6500m. Only 2% of the ocean is deeper than 6000m, so a design depth of 6000m is often considered "full ocean depth". The deepest point in the ocean is 11000m at the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench. There is one (new) ROV/AUV (hybrid, dual mode) capable of reaching 11000m.
But you asked about the ROVs working in the Gulf. I don't know what their range of depth ratings is, though it's likely that others posting here know. It adds some expense to design for a greater depth than needed, so those ROVs might be limited to the depths being explored for oil around the world, or just the depths in the Gulf of Mexico. I would not be surprised if some of them are 6000m rated.
Difficult: yes. Insurmountable, no. There have been deep ROVs for 20 years or more.
The search rate for ROVs is very low compared to other tools available. At this point the AF447 search needs to cover a wide area. The best visual range I have seen in the deep ocean is 20m, and 10-15m is more common. That limits a visual swath to about 30m, and at 1knot max transit speed, that covers about 1sq-km/day. The BEA site lists 5sq-km/day search rate for the ROVs they had, but that is likely using the ROV's sonar, not its cameras.
Also, ship time is one of the largest cost factors, so minimizing the number of ships is important. I'm not sure what the state of the art is for number of ROVs from one ship; I'm sure it depends on operating depth and other conditions. I have never seen more than one per ship, because of the difficulty of entanglement, but I expect that they are doing more than that at the oil spill site. Some differences there: the depth is "only" 1500m, and the ships are standing still or moving very slowly.
The oil industry has a fleet of ROVs like the 12 that are working on the Gulf spill. They're working at just shy of a mile down now. Is that their limit, or can they work deep enough to be effective at the AF-447 site?
But you asked about the ROVs working in the Gulf. I don't know what their range of depth ratings is, though it's likely that others posting here know. It adds some expense to design for a greater depth than needed, so those ROVs might be limited to the depths being explored for oil around the world, or just the depths in the Gulf of Mexico. I would not be surprised if some of them are 6000m rated.
I realize that they're tethered and that would probably add more difficulty. Anything insurmountable?
I guess I've been thinking along the lines of a couple of ships controlling a handful of these each for a very deliberate visual search that, if nothing else might rule out areas.
Also, ship time is one of the largest cost factors, so minimizing the number of ships is important. I'm not sure what the state of the art is for number of ROVs from one ship; I'm sure it depends on operating depth and other conditions. I have never seen more than one per ship, because of the difficulty of entanglement, but I expect that they are doing more than that at the oil spill site. Some differences there: the depth is "only" 1500m, and the ships are standing still or moving very slowly.
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Pinger locations and Emeraude
auv-ee,
My hope for retrieving the boxes still rests mainly on Emeraude's recordings. Some time ago I asked, if two pingers rest on the ocean floor with some distance between them, whether that distance would help to locate them. I wasn't thinking about doppler shift, but perhaps I wasn't successful in making myself clear. This sketch explains my thinking:
Sub and pingers
Assuming that both pingers emit a pulse at the same time, the sub in position (1) would receive the pulse emitted by pinger B slightly earlier than that of pinger A. The time shift between the received pulses A and B would change in different positions of the sub relative to the pingers, would it not?
Regards,
HN39
My hope for retrieving the boxes still rests mainly on Emeraude's recordings. Some time ago I asked, if two pingers rest on the ocean floor with some distance between them, whether that distance would help to locate them. I wasn't thinking about doppler shift, but perhaps I wasn't successful in making myself clear. This sketch explains my thinking:
Sub and pingers
Assuming that both pingers emit a pulse at the same time, the sub in position (1) would receive the pulse emitted by pinger B slightly earlier than that of pinger A. The time shift between the received pulses A and B would change in different positions of the sub relative to the pingers, would it not?
Regards,
HN39
Last edited by HazelNuts39; 5th Jun 2010 at 13:23. Reason: spelling
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Originally Posted by HN39
Assuming that both pingers emit a pulse at the same time, the sub in position (1) would receive the pulse emitted by pinger B slightly earlier than that of pinger A. The time shift between the received pulses A and B would change in different positions of the sub relative to the pingers, would it not?
I am just hoping that Emeraude really heard anything at all. There seems to still be uncertainty about that.
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Originally Posted by takata
Added to that both Airbus/Air France recommended turbulence penetration mode is Autothrottles OFF while AF447 A/T was kicked OFF by systems at 02.10, consequently, she was certainly not in turbulence penetration mode/speed until this point. Moreover, at 02.10, more than half of the CB system was already crossed, they were not just penetrating it.
The Airbus recommendation to disconnect A/THR applies if severe turbulence is already encountered and only when thrust changes become excessive as per QRH.
Originally Posted by mm43
Which explains why they stated the turbulence penetration speed was M0.78 instead of M0.80 in the A330.
But the BBC program mention of Mach.76 is effectively also inexact.
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Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions, auv-ee. It's great to have go-to folks to help explain all this arcane stuff.
Yeah, absolutely crazy. I found the bit of the feed I watched from the Gulf absolutely fascinating. But still having a very hard time wrapping my head around the depths that have to be dealt with at the AF-447 site.
the depth is "only" 1500m
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Originally Posted by tubby linton
But the BBC program mention of Mach.76 is effectively also inexact
That is because it was the CTC A320 sim!
That is because it was the CTC A320 sim!
Did I hear it correctly around minute 18 ?
Several other flights took the same route as AF447, but all these pilots saw the storm coming and made detours of about 90 miles to avoid it.
Per Ardua ad Astraeus
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As the BEA, the BBC wants to make people think AF447 was the only one to fly through the red area
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It is a bit like tricking the figures to better fit the theory.
Suffice to say that the expected slowing down for turb.penetration may have had further consequences when the A/THR disconnected?
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I thought it was a well-balanced documentary which did a good job of getting across some complex technical concepts. Presumably they made use of a 320 sim because that was the closest type they could get hold of within their timescale? At least they didn't use a Boeing cockpit!
With regard to their statement that AF447 was the only flight to go straight through the stormband, I actually thought that was reasonably close to the facts as they emerged at the time? Other flights seem to have picked their way between bad areas, and I seem to recall at least one other pilot expressing surprise at the route followed by AF447, going by their reported track.
There was also a lot of discussion here about using weather radar. I thought the program made rather less of that than I would have expected.
With regard to their statement that AF447 was the only flight to go straight through the stormband, I actually thought that was reasonably close to the facts as they emerged at the time? Other flights seem to have picked their way between bad areas, and I seem to recall at least one other pilot expressing surprise at the route followed by AF447, going by their reported track.
There was also a lot of discussion here about using weather radar. I thought the program made rather less of that than I would have expected.