Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is missing

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teddybAIR
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Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has crashed into Indian O

Post by teddybAIR »

I don't see how those submarines could be the most efficient asset to deploy. I imagine they are usually not equiped for the SAR role (feel free to contradict) and unless they are in the area - for which I do not see a good geopolitical reason since it's noman's land - it would take weeks to get them there.

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Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has crashed into Indian O

Post by teddybAIR »

According to CNN a pinger locator has detected sounds "consistent with that sent by FDR's/CVR's and seabed imagery also indicated "a visual signal" at a depth of 4500m. In hindsight and if this proves to be the crashsite, I would like to say that I am impressed that we even found the crashsite. If this confirms to be it, than the flight disappeared 1.500km from nearest land in inhospitable waters resting 4.500m (that's deep!) under the water surface. If this is true, than the find is an extraordinary achievement and not as reported by media and critics a scandal.

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sn26567
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Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has crashed into Indian O

Post by sn26567 »

Key Points this 7 April:
  • An Australian navy ship has detected two signals consistent with those from aircraft "black box" flight recorders
  • The signal was heard in sea with a depth of 4,500m (14,800ft)
  • Ocean Shield acquired the signal twice, once for more than two hours
  • A Chinese search vessel also said it briefly heard signals over the weekend in a different search area
  • Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, leading the search, called it the "most promising lead" so far
Source: BBC

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Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has crashed into Indian O

Post by Passenger »

sn26567 wrote:Key Points this 7 April:
  • An Australian navy ship has detected two signals consistent with those from aircraft "black box" flight recorders
  • The signal was heard in sea with a depth of 4,500m (14,800ft)
  • Ocean Shield acquired the signal twice, once for more than two hours
  • A Chinese search vessel also said it briefly heard signals over the weekend in a different search area
  • Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, leading the search, called it the "most promising lead" so far
Source: BBC
It seems indeed that this lead is one of the best so far:

http://www.news.com.au/world/asia/mh37o ... 6876318133

regi
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Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has crashed into Indian O

Post by regi »

and now they start talking about the cost.

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Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has crashed into Indian O

Post by convair »

Not exactly on topic, but not far: CNN, among others, now reveals that the recording system can be tampered with by the pilots! Incredible and shocking! In this day and age when nuts roam freely almost everywhere, what a naive and unprofessional approach by the civil aviation authorities! Safety is claimed to be THE priority! Wake up guys, time to enter the 3rd millenium!

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Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has crashed into Indian O

Post by sn26567 »

In the wake of disappearance of flight MH370, ICAO announces a special meeting on global airline flight tracking in May 2014.

viewtopic.php?f=31&t=52902
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Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has crashed into Indian O

Post by Passenger »

It seems they're coming close now, thanks to the Aussie Angus Houston and his JACC:

Update on Aviation Herald:

On Apr 9th 2014 the JACC reported three days after the first two detections of late Apr 5th ADV Ocean Shield succeeded to re-acquire the ping signals on two occasions (detections #3 and #4) late Apr 8th. Detection #3 lasted 5:32 minutes and detection #4 7 minutes, all in the same broad area, however these two detections recorded one source of pings only. The JACC believes they are searching in the right area defining a reduced and much more manageable search area at the ocean floor, however, they need to visually identify aircraft wreckage before they can confirm with certainty that this is the final resting place of MH-370.

The ADV Ocean Shield is continuing methological work to refine the search area around the 4 ping detection locations, the autonomous underwater vehicle has not yet been deployed, the towed pinger locator can cover six times the area in the same time the autonomous underwater vehicle would be able to do with its sonar equipment. Acoustic analysis of the recordings of the detections so far indicates the pulsed signals at a very stable frequency of 33.331kHz at 1.106 seconds intervals, this is not a signal of natural origin and is consistent with the signals to be emitted by the underwater ping locator of flight data or cockpit voice recorders.

The size of the search area has significantly reduced in the last few days based on the detections by ADV Ocean Shield and known ocean drift. 84 hydroacoustic buyos are being dropped in the area, that will place their hydrophones about 1000 feet below the water surface and radio their signals to a ground station. The sea floor is covered with silt that limits acoustic propagation of signals (not reflecting signals) and at the same time permits debris to "hide" in the silt. The knowledge of silt on the ocean floor comes from a sample that has been taken several years ago in a location about 160nm from the current search area.

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Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has crashed into Indian O

Post by Inquirer »

Would they try to recover just the recorders, or also the victims?

I suppose much will depend on the state in which the plane is, if found?

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Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has crashed into Indian O

Post by earthman »

Silly me, right until now I somehow thought the signals emitted by the box were radio signals, only now do I realize it's an acoustic signal...

Perhaps it would be feasible to modulate a time code into the pings? That would make it much easier to locate the thing, since then you would not just hear the sound, but also know the distance to the source. Given the transmission time, the time of reception, the location, and some fancy modelling of underwater acoustics (which I'm sure the more advanced navies of the world have solved decades ago), you could determine the location pretty accurately after picking up only a few pings, possibly two would give a pretty good indication already.

If only we knew how to talk to whales.. Ask them if they've heard this annoying ping sound anywhere, they would have pointed us to the crash site a month ago (even if just to make that afwul noise stop).

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Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has crashed into Indian O

Post by teddybAIR »

Actually, it would probably make sense to have the pingers work in a sort of transponder mode where they only 'ping' if they detect an interrogation. So much like the technology of a secundary surveillance radar and the onboard transponder, or the reverse system: DME ranging equipment. I see two principal advantages:

1) it would provide range information mentionned by Earthman hereabove, which would indeed make sense
2) it would probably significantly increase battery life since most of the time the FDR/CVR would be listening for interrogations instead of broadcasting pings. It is transmitting which is the real drain on a battery.

Yet, it would also have disadvantages
1) situations where airliners crash in cruize flight only represent an extreme minority of crashes. If you would now als account for the crashed airplanes that cannot be found with the present technology, MH370 would probably be your only example, so does the investment justify the return?

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Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has crashed into Indian O

Post by FlightMate »

Another disadvantage I see, is that by adding more technology, you add more chances for something to fail.

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Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has crashed into Indian O

Post by teddybAIR »

Hi flightmate,

valid point, but the upside is that a failure does not affect flight safety more than the current system would

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Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has crashed into Indian O

Post by teddybAIR »

How deep is deep? by CNN

Good article explaining just how difficult the underwater search for MH370 must be. Question: how deep is 4,5km? it's deeper than the equivalent height of the statue of liberty for sure. It's deeper than the Eifel Tower or Burj Khaliffa, the highest building on earth. As a matter of fact it is deeper than five Burj Khaliffa's stacked on top of each other.
Now imagine standing at about that height. Now look down and try spotting something on the surface that has the equivalent size of a suitcase. See it? Now imagine doing the same in the dark on a foggy night with that suitcase half burried in the sand...that's not nearly close to how challenging the search actually is.

They also published a good article on sound propagation through water to illustrate that at these depths it is not so obvious to determine the source location of a ping. The theory is quite comparable to the propagation theories of radio waves in earth's atmosfphere with phenomena as ducting, refraction, diffraction, reflection, attenuation, fading,...

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Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has crashed into Indian O

Post by regi »

This is all fine and true.
But fact:
not 1 decomposed body, life jacket, seat, floating foam part of this entire flight has been recovered at sea, in fishermen's nets, at beaches. You don't need a ping for that. And if there is a ping, it turns out to be a false alarm, as has been notified today.

Untill the contrary has been proved, I just stick with my own silly idea:
Chinese air defense was lured to shoot down the airliner above Hainan.
The Chinese cleaned up the mess in 1 day. ( possible in a communist state )
China doesn't allow search planes above its territory.
Ping-ers are set out at the most remote possible places to keep everybody busy.
And after some years, the world will accept that it is too costly to search the ocean at 4500 meters deep.
China will drop some life jackets and decomposed bodies along Australian and Indonesian shores to keep up the story. And the world will believe it.
Malaysia will be the culprit. Muslims, suicide, gambling debts, divorce... whatever.

teddybAIR
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Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has crashed into Indian O

Post by teddybAIR »

regi wrote:This is all fine and true.
But fact:
not 1 decomposed body, life jacket, seat, floating foam part of this entire flight has been recovered at sea, in fishermen's nets, at beaches. You don't need a ping for that. And if there is a ping, it turns out to be a false alarm, as has been notified today.
Patience regi, patience...
I don't know if many fishing boats can be found 1.500km from nearest land...

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Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has crashed into Indian O

Post by bollox »

I have my own theory that the plane did not descend to 4500 feet but remained at the higher FL. In one report the Malaysian Military reported that MH370 'went through the bottom of the screen' at 4500 feet.
It may be that obstructions relatively near the station limit higher and lower coverage of both the primary and secondary (maybe with a crappy IFF hog-trough antenna).
Also, Military often switch off Mode A and C plots since an enemy would not broadcast (squawk) a code and probably would not be found in busy air routes. Who wants Malaysia?
If the crew were incapacitated they may have put the waypoints/ route to a safe area in the nav computer but could not act further to land. I stick by something like sudden de-compression which could also have damaged the transponder and R/T system.

How the hell do you keep passengers from destroying the whole interior during 6 hours, if they discover that there was a problem? They wont if they are dead................

Where is the military radar located? Somewhere near the top of the peninsula...........

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Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has crashed into Indian O

Post by teddybAIR »

Is it that hard to just wait until we find something before posting theories that are based on...well...little or nothing?

bollox
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Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has crashed into Indian O

Post by bollox »

Only 46 years in International ATC and Aviation (civil and military) Some of us enjoy mental exercises. Do you think that the people that projected the trajectory were impatient and just theorising? :D

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Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has crashed into Indian O

Post by Sai »

Tomorrow Sat April 12 there's a 1h documentry: "Flight 370: The missing links" on Discovery Channel Belgium at 2155h. Probably English with Dutch subtitles adressing some issues in finding it. http://www.yourdiscovery.com/nl/web/fli ... ing-links/

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