Contact lost with Malaysia Plane.

[jamescollister]

hazz, as posted earlier, the satellite is non directional, to get a direction you need a start point. That point is the at last radar fix.

if you follow the link in the post, you will see a detailed explanation as to what they have a done. As far as I can tell they have made no use of the ground radar information and the point of reference they gave used for their calculations has been the location of the satellite itself. what the staff at imarsat have achieved with this latest data confirming the southern route has been very impressive, they obviously have some very talented mathematicians.

there is nothing suspicious about the whats been said about the imarsat transmissions. These radios can do a lot or nothing depending upon the services the airline subscribes... all we have seen is the usual noise you get when people talk before they have all the facts and fill in the gaps with what they will be the case. the transmissions were simply between the airplane radio terminal and the imarsat.... internal housekeeping. thats why roles Royce and everyone else is saying they got nothing....
sill its food for the conspiracy theorists

read the link, little diagram, Australian base satellite, plane flying away from satellite [can't cut and paste for some reason ] anyway planes flying in the opposite direction, or any direction, still gives the same doppler shift.
Satellites in a stationary orbit, it receives a signal, it's non directional, doppler shift only says coming or going. It sends to the ground station, no direction of travel.
Plane can come from East, West , South or North, same doppler shift to the ground station.
Think I need a few more details of how they got the aircraft position in the first place.
Not saying the data is wrong, just no confirmation that it's right. Jim

[somtamslap]

Blooper of the century awarded to British Airways...

British Airways says sorry after ill-timed ad encouraging communters to 'Discover the Indian Ocean.'

[Ronin]

Well he could be right and most likely is about the wreckage, will let people draw their own conclusions (have fun all you sleuths);


Video: MH370 wreckage has been found says aviation expert

[Troy]

anyway planes flying in the opposite direction, or any direction, still gives the same doppler shift.

This is incorrect James....The frequency shift of the incoming will be in relation to the relative motion between the two objects. The aircraft moving towards the satellite will produce an increase in the relative carrier frequency and vice versa as it moves away from it.

You may be confused by reading somewhere that the shift will be the same for identical speeds moving towards and away. However, there will be be a 180 degree phase shift in such circumstances.

The problem is how long did the plane continue to fly after the last transmission and at what speed and direction? The assumptions have to be constant speed and direction and then play with these if nothing is found where expected.

[hazz]

jim, I have read think like about imarsats calcs before I pasted them and did go to the trouble of working out what they have done. thats how I came to the conclusion that imasat have some good chaps.... given the time they have done this work.

The two arcs are not commercial routes, but the first two paths calculated from the satellite data.

\

the two arcs where not the route or path of the plane. they were arc of positions where the last ping handshake transmission would have generated the log information that imarsat had available at the time. Obviously as the aircraft in all likelihood did not crash the instant the transmissions were made it will have in all likelihood have crossed that arc and continued in whatever direction it was going until its fuel ran out.
So drawing it as a line has caused confusion, a better representation would be, including an area within which the plain would have been able to fly post transmission based upon fuel loads and best guesses on how much fuel would have been left.

Imarsat have used information for know flights to create and test calculations which how now given them more detail as to what the plane did. most importently they have been able to confirm a southern flight path

[Ronin]

Update: Maybe getting closer;

A Chinese military plane scanning part of a search zone for signs of debris from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has spotted several objects floating in the sea, including two bearing colours of the missing jet.
But it was not immediately clear whether the objects were related to the three-week-old investigation, and the second day of searching in an area the size of Poland ended with no evidence found of the jet, officials said.
The Chinese Ilyushin IL-76 spotted three floating objects, China's official Xinhua News Agency said, a day after several planes and ships combing the newly targeted area closer to Australia saw several other objects.
Ships from China and Australia scooped up items described only as "objects from the ocean", but none were "confirmed to be related" to Flight 370, said a statement from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which is overseeing the search.
Relatives and friends of the passengers said they were tortured by the uncertainty over the fate of their loved ones, as they wait for hard evidence that the plane crashed.
Sarah Bajc, the American girlfriend of US passenger Philip Wood, said in Beijing: "This is the trauma of maybe he's dead, maybe he's not. Maybe he's still alive and we need to find him. Maybe he died within the first hour of the flight, and we don't know."
"I mean, there's absolutely no way for me to reconcile that in my heart."
The three objects spotted by the Chinese plane today were white, red and orange. The missing Boeing 777's exterior was red, white, blue and grey.
An Australian PC3 Orion search plane also sighted objects in a different part of the search area, but the maritime safety authority did not describe those objects in greater detail.
An image captured a day earlier by a New Zealand plane showed a white rectangular object floating in the sea, but it was not clear whether it was related to the missing jet or was just sea debris.
Flight 370 disappeared March 8 while bound from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, and investigators have been puzzled over what happened aboard the plane, with speculation ranging from equipment failure and a botched hijacking to terrorism or an act by one of the pilots.
The latter was fuelled by reports that the pilot's home flight simulator had files deleted from it, but Malaysian defence minister Hishammuddin Hussein said checks had turned up no new information.
He said: "What I know is that there is nothing sinister from the simulators, but of course that will have to be confirmed by the chief of police."
Newly-analysed satellite data shifted the search zone yesterday, raising expectations that searchers may be closer to getting physical evidence that the plane crashed in the Indian Ocean with 239 people aboard.
That would also help narrow the hunt for the wreckage and the plane's black boxes, which could contain clues to what caused the plane to be so far off-course.
The US Navy has already sent equipment that can detect pings from the back boxes, and Australian prime minister Tony Abbott told reporters in Sydney that the equipment would be put on an Australian naval ship soon.
"It will be taken to the most prospective search area and if there is good reason to deploy it, it will be deployed," he said, without giving a time frame. Other officials have said it could take days for the ship, the Ocean Shield, to reach the search area.
The newly targeted zone is nearly 700 miles (1,130km) north-east of sites the searchers have criss-crossed for the past week. The redeployment came after analysts determined that the Boeing 777 may have been travelling faster than earlier estimates and would therefore have run out of fuel sooner.
The new search area is closer to Perth than the previous one, with a flying time of two-and-a-half hours each way, allowing for five hours of search time, according to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority.
AMSA said five P-3 Orions three from Australia and one each from Japan and New Zealand - plus a Japanese coast guard jet, the Chinese Ilyushin IL-76, and one civilian jet acting as a communications relay took part today.
Royal Australian Air Force Flight Lt. Russell Adams said: "The weather in the area was reasonably good - most of the area we were able to see four or five kilometres (two or three miles) or more."
"The sea state was up, however, which meant there were quite a few whitecaps in the area so the crew would have had a bit of difficulty discerning between objects in the water and the whitecaps, so it made it hard for the guys today."
Some family members in Beijing said they want to fly to Kuala Lumpur to seek more answers from the government, but an airline representative said it may have to wait a day because of a lack of hotel space this weekend because of the Formula One Malaysian Grand Prix race.
Steve Wang, a representative of some of the Chinese families in Beijing, said about 50 relatives wanted to go to Malaysia because they were not happy with the responses given by Malaysian government representatives in China.
"Because they sent a so-called high-level group to meet us, but they have not been able to answer all our questions," he said. "It's either they are not in charge of a certain aspect of work or that it's still being investigated, or it's not convenient for them to comment."
Malaysia Airlines' commercial director, Hugh Dunleavy, said in Beijing that the airline was trying to facilitate the relatives' travel to Kuala Lumpur, but that plans had not been confirmed because of the difficulties in booking hotels this weekend.
If investigators can determine that the plane went down in the newly targeted zone - which spans about 123,000 square miles (319,000 square kilometres) - recovery of its flight data and cockpit voice recorders could be complicated.
Much of the sea floor in the area is about 6,600ft (2,000m) below the surface, but depths may reach a maximum of about 19,700ft (6,000m) at its easternmost edge.
The hunt for the plane focused first on the Gulf of Thailand, along the plane's planned path. But when radar data showed it had veered sharply west, the search moved to the Andaman Sea, off the western coast of Malaysia, before pivoting to the southern Indian Ocean, south-west of Australia.



Jet search plane spots more objects

[Sailing into trouble]

Some questions .So if it was a disastrous fire that fried the electronics would that not have silenced the engine "Pingers"? Is their definite word on how longer signals came from the engines? If the pilots where keeping the aircraft aloft without directional control, would it have been possible to steer the plane by throttle manipulation or is all that electronic as well?

[Troy]

If the pilots where keeping the aircraft aloft without directional control, would it have been possible to steer the plane by throttle manipulation or is all that electronic as well?

If they had no electrical power but still had hydraulics then they would have:
1. Mechanical stab trim for pitch control (no elevators)
2. Mechanical rudder for directional control
3. Some (limited) spoilers for roll control (no ailerons)
4. No engine control (I can't find any reference to mechanical backup)
This is only meant to be an emergency condition until power is restored and it would rely on running or windmilling engines in order to maintain hydraulic pressure.
I don't know if the engine control remains at last throttle position (I assume so) or goes to a failure mode setting.

One other point; following the "Lauda Air accident", FADEC engines were required to have a mechanical link to show engine PLA via throttle feedback. However, I don't know if this was only for reverse thrust (movement of throttles to Idle) or if it was only FAA and only Boeing because Airbus don't have this as far as I'm aware.

[jamescollister]

Interesting read, it's the public version, not the classified information.
Seems it can track missile in China.
Look at the admitted coverage.

http://www.airforce.gov.au/docs/JORN_Fact_Sheet.pdf

[Necron99]

Interesting read, it's the public version, not the classified information.
Seems it can track missile in China.
Look at the admitted coverage.

http://www.airforce.gov.au/docs/JORN_Fact_Sheet.pdf

You have a strange idea of how far away China is Jim.

I brought up Jindalee about 30 pages back and suggested that Oz might have tracked or partially tracked the flight but was keeping mum for security reasons.

From that whitepaper you linked it seems less likely.
Was the system even on? It says it only runs 24/7 in emergencies.

And the nature of the system:

"Object behaviour. OTHR systems operate on the Doppler principle, where an object will only be detected if its motion toward or away from the radar is different from the movement of its surroundings. Objects travelling tangentially to an OTHR are therefore unlikely to be detected by that radar."

The plane would have been flying for most of it's journey neither toward or away from the array and likely thus to not be tracked.

But, I am still surprised that Journos have specifically asked the question?
Or have they?

[Norton]

Or have they?

Apparently they have but Aussies not talking.

"Australia has declined to say whether its Jindalee over-the-horizon (OTH) radar system tracked MH370, the Malaysian Airlines 777-200 flight that disappeared over the South China Sea on March 8 with 239 people aboard.

Officially, Jindalee has a range of 3,000 km (1,900 mi.), about 1,500 km less than the distance to the point where MH370 disappeared, but the Royal Australian Air Force system is reputed to be able to reach the South China Sea, depending on atmospheric conditions.

China also has such sensors, which, unlike most radars, cannot be avoided by dropping below their horizons. However, they do not continuously monitor their entire fields of view; instead they focus on one patch at a time. And Australia’s system is not always operational.

Asked whether Jindalee had tracked MH370 and whether foreign authorities had asked Australia for information from the system, a spokesperson for the defense dept. says Australia is “closely engaged with the Malaysian authorities coordinating the search mission.” This includes the assignment of two Lockheed Martin P-3C Orion maritime aircraft to the search.

“As part of this international effort, any information relating to flight MH370 is passed to Malaysian authorities who are responsible for providing updated public information on efforts to locate MH370,” the spokesperson says in response to Aviation Week’s questions.

Australia issues only limited information about Jindalee, whose three enormous antenna installations are spaced across the Outback.


Australia Silent On Whether OTH Radar Tracked MH370

[jamescollister]

Sure they switch off a billion dollar system to save electricity, all the workers go home to garden and the NSA at Pine Gap are only interested in personal phone traffic.

Aussies, or yanks are not giving much away.

[jamescollister]

Operation and uses[edit]

The JORN network is operated by No. 1 Radar Surveillance Unit RAAF (1RSU). Data from the JORN sites is fed to the JORN Coordination Centre at RAAF Base Edinburgh where it is passed on to other agencies and military units. Officially the system allows the Australian Defence Force to observe all air and sea activity north of Australia to distances of 3000 km. This encompasses all of Java, Irian Jaya, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, and halfway across the Indian Ocean. Other sources put the range at 4000 km from the Australian coastline,[23] as far away as Singapore.[24]
The JORN is so sensitive it is able to track planes as small as a Cessna 172 taking off and landing in East Timor 2600 km away. Current research is anticipated to increase its sensitivity by a factor of ten beyond this level. It is also reportedly able to detect stealth aircraft, as typically these are designed only to avoid detection by microwave radar.[6] Project DUNDEE[25] was a cooperative research project, with American missile defence research.

[jamescollister]

Interesting read, it's the public version, not the classified information.
Seems it can track missile in China.
Look at the admitted coverage.

http://www.airforce.gov.au/docs/JORN_Fact_Sheet.pdf

You have a strange idea of how far away China is Jim.

I brought up Jindalee about 30 pages back and suggested that Oz might have tracked or partially tracked the flight but was keeping mum for security reasons.

From that whitepaper you linked it seems less likely.
Was the system even on? It says it only runs 24/7 in emergencies.

And the nature of the system:

"Object behaviour. OTHR systems operate on the Doppler principle, where an object will only be detected if its motion toward or away from the radar is different from the movement of its surroundings. Objects travelling tangentially to an OTHR are therefore unlikely to be detected by that radar."

The plane would have been flying for most of it's journey neither toward or away from the array and likely thus to not be tracked.

But, I am still surprised that Journos have specifically asked the question?
Or have they?

Think the paper is a bit dated, talking 1987 technology.
Today if you can believe what you, read they are tracking illegal fishing and boat people on it.
It's also part of the US ballistic missile defence network, doubt they switch it off.

[hazz]

^^^actually people do. After you have built something expensive its the running costs not the build costs that become important. with these radars electricity is a massive running cost. Rather like cern who turn off their 6 billion pound atom smasher during winter because of the electricity is significantly more expensive to them than it is for the rest of the year.

The radar is there to provide long range early warning, when normal ground radar is not good enough. Unless you have an ongoing cold war situation as pakistan, india and china have, there is little need to have it running all the time, the electricity costs are very very significant given the hideous inefficiency of the propagation path and its one of the few non fixed operating costs. and what do the staff do whilst its off.... not hard to imagine they just do what armed forces grloably do whilst their not actively engaged.... they train and practice.

saying that security is going to be a significant issue for this. china is the primary security threat to most of the contries involved, has border disputes with just about all of the countries around it.... some of which (and i am thinking the south china sea) are staggeringly childish and they are trying to enforce their claims.
Nobody is going provide information which could compromise their defences from chinese attack to help find this plane.... india has already told them to fuck off and its unlikely that any information from OTH will be given in any attributable or identifiable form.
off topic, but lets be honest its only a matter of time before china winds up the locals to put aside their differences and create a mutual defence organisation similar to nato... putting china in the rather uncomfortable position of being surrounded by potentially hostile nations who have pre agreed to respond to a chinese attach.

[jamescollister]

Bit of a dilemma, say it's there, then everyone knows you have the capability, say it's not, ditto.
Say nothing, search in the wrong place and know one knows whether you have the capability or not.
Guess that's everyone, China, OZ, US, India, keep out of it and let the Malaysians take the heat. Jim

[Necron99]

Bit of a dilemma, say it's there, then everyone knows you have the capability, say it's not, ditto.
Say nothing, search in the wrong place and know one knows whether you have the capability or not.
Guess that's everyone, China, OZ, US, India, keep out of it and let the Malaysians take the heat. Jim

The quickness of the search focus shift and handing ownership over to Oz leads me to believe hey have at least a rough idea and were only waiting for the satellite data to give them an excuse to jump in and take the lead..

But then the inability to tun anything up despite having an excuse to search says otherwize..

[Lostandfound]

Xinhua Abandons Search for Japanese Link to Missing Plane | Ministry of Harmony

BEIJING — After spending weeks combing through official reports, attending press conferences and interviewing aviation insiders, Xinhua has officially called off the search for a Japanese link to the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370.
On Friday morning, Beijing bureau chief Qian Congmin convened the agency’s top news editors for a special meeting, where he announced that they should “abandon the search for Japanese involvement in this tragedy,” adding that “in all likelihood, the blood of these innocent victims will never conclusively be on Japan’s hands.”
Later that afternoon, Qian met with a gathering of friends and family members of the missing passengers. Fighting back tears, Qian told his audience that “in our darkest times, we’ve always found solace in casting blame upon the Evil Empire of Japan. But in this case, my colleagues and I were unable to establish even a tenuous link between the airplane and the Abe administration.”
“Perhaps this time we’ll have to settle with blaming Malaysia.”
He continued, ”Unlike cut-and-dry tragedies like the Nanking Massacre, Mukden Incident and the Great Leap Forward, if the Japanese were indeed involved in the disappearance of MH370, they have covered their tracks so well that even our greatest journalists are unable to uncover them.”
Qian told the crowd that if and when the airplane was found, “you must all prepare yourselves for the likelihood that no Japanese people were to blame for this tragedy.”
Despite Xinhua’s announcement, other news services in China have refused to abandon the search, with many accusing Xinhua of giving up too easily when there remains a slim chance that Tokyo is somehow behind all of this.
“While defeatists have begun to accept the disappearance of MH370 as a shocking and meaningless loss of life,” wrote Global Times columnist Dong Fanghong. “We at the Global Times will never abandon the belief that any tragedy, no matter how ostensibly unrelated to Japan, can be exploited for jingoistic purposes.”
“So long as tragedies continue to happen, we will continue to blame outside forces,” Dong continued. “Perhaps this time it won’t be Japan; perhaps this time we’ll have to settle with blaming Malaysia.”

[jamescollister]

Don't know why I can't copy and paste these pics.

BBC News - Flight MH370 'crashed in south Indian Ocean' - Malaysia PM

Red line is alleged IMSAT flight path, what's it flying over.
Article says, along the arc, not within the arc.
As posted before, why turn round, just fly SW from last ACARS signal.

Think more is known, but they aren't saying, don't know who to believe. Jim

[Necron99]

Don't know why I can't copy and paste these pics.

BBC News - Flight MH370 'crashed in south Indian Ocean' - Malaysia PM

Red line is alleged IMSAT flight path, what's it flying over.
Article says, along the arc, not within the arc.
As posted before, why turn round, just fly SW from last ACARS signal.

Think more is known, but they aren't saying, don't know who to believe. Jim

It's original course was north. To fly SW it kinda has to turn around dunnit...?

[jamescollister]

Don't know why I can't copy and paste these pics.

BBC News - Flight MH370 'crashed in south Indian Ocean' - Malaysia PM

Red line is alleged IMSAT flight path, what's it flying over.
Article says, along the arc, not within the arc.
As posted before, why turn round, just fly SW from last ACARS signal.

Think more is known, but they aren't saying, don't know who to believe. Jim

It's original course was north. To fly SW it kinda has to turn around dunnit...?

Was it, what's north of KL, plane flew NE, look at the map. Plane turned [maybe] 5 pings not 7 hours. where's the truth.
According too the BBC, red line, what did the plane fly over, or very near. Think they have radar. Jim

[hazz]

Red line is alleged IMSAT flight path, what's it flying over.

no its not a flight path. The red line represents an arc, which the plane crossed at some point as the plane sent its last transmission to imarsat.
If you care to look at the map again you will see that this arc, the circle representing the range and the initial search areas do rather line up together

[Norton]

Confusion reigns. Daily news briefings do nothing to clarify anything. It is simply a forum to incrementally release conflicting information.

All sorts of information needs to be released to public. For starters, cockpit transcript and recording, actual pics of the Malaysian/Thai Air defense tracks, and data from ACARS that caused the search area to be radically relocated.

Whole thing is reminiscent of a Keystone Cops episode.

[ENT]

Now the famous last words reported from MH370 are;

"Good night Malaysian three seven zero."

not "Good night sleep tight." as earlier reported by Malaysian airlines.

So who's telling lies, and why?

[Troy]

^ I could have been a simple ad-lib to a seemingly petty question whose significance has been blown out of all proportion....