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MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection, says paper

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Re: MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection, says paper

#111
post #83
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the vote in a public referendum?

Ignoring for a moment the aspect of "going to vote against invaders under the watch of invaders": 93% - Eastern bloc polls always had this good results, probably because their leaders were so beloved that people kicked them out the moment they got the chance.

Ignoring the current polls an looking at historical "free" election results, the southern part of Ukraine seems to have more support for Russian than one might otherwise think.

But this is getting qute off topic.

Re: MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection, says paper

#112
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point is a $100 spot device could be added (powered by Li AA's) as a backup system. This would have independent power supply and obviate the "need for cicuit breakers" being accessed. Or something like a lo-jack or whatever. Its completely embarassing to Boeing. Almost as bad as the pilot has a 64mb i phone and the [edit: voice recorders] holds only 2hrs? WTF. An Iphone might not itself survive, but the media allocat…

> Point is a $100 spot device could be added (powered by Li AA's) as a backup system Li AAs... without a means of isolating them from the circuitry? How many aircraft are you prepared to lose through in-flight fires for this 'benefit'? Reference: Ethiopian Airlines 787 fire at Heathrow originating from lithium cells in the ELT. Who is going to check the battery status at regular intervals? Who is going to certify and…

Laugh all you want, but the tech is pretty simple. You need to look at what it is doing. Replacing a transponder with something that is much simpler than an epirb. The example I gave is a $100 dollar current piece of tech that weigs 150 grams including power-source, and if it was available to LOS througha window could track the plane for 4-7 hours off a single set of batteries. If you want to raise the budget for an order of magnitude or two, for 10k dollars you could surely create a redundant system for the transponder.

The larger point is that any "real situation" that would need the transponder turned off (power/fire/corruption) would have almost no bearing on the operability of such a simple system.

FYI the imarsat pings are not all that different, are they? Its just a simple ping with some data that including headers is going to be very minimal payload...like SMS text type level of data.

Re: MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection, says paper

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the US deploy such satellites to view the southern Indian Ocean? I could understand deployment in potential areas of interest, but that particular area is about as boring as it gets. My point is that even if those capabilities exist, it's not clear that they would be able to help in this particular case.

Unless the satellites are in geosync, it's likely they are orbiting and could just randomly come across the correct area at that time. If not, I'm wondering why people like Skybox [1] didn't deploy resources immediately to start covering ground. It seems like that approach would be much more effective than ships in the ocean? [1] http://skyboximaging.com/

There is a protocol to task satellites to cover emergencies which was used in this case

http://www.disasterscharter.org/web/charter/activation_detai...

Skybox is also contributing and has this visualisation of the Search Efforts with Satellites to date including those that are needed to cover the expanded search area http://www.skyboximaging.com/news/in-search-of-malaysia-airl...

Re: MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection, says paper

#114
post #78
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the vote in a public referendum?

And videos from the ground.

Taken by Russian media. The military have cut off all communication links between the Crimea and the outside world and have been stopping independent journalists from filming.

Re: MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection, says paper

#115
post #60
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the FDR is designed to survive multi-g impacts - how well would that smart phone survive?

The spot device doesn't need to survive a crash, just needs to send out a GPS ping once every 10 minutes. ie to give a fix on where the crash is would be sufficient.

10 minutes isn't nearly enough. Remember you're talking about something moving at 8-10 miles per minute, 10 minutes, so worse case your solution will give a range about the size of Iowa.

Re: MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection, says paper

#116
post #115
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The spot device doesn't need to survive a crash, just needs to send out a GPS ping once every 10 minutes. ie to give a fix on where the crash is would be sufficient.

10 minutes isn't nearly enough. Remember you're talking about something moving at 8-10 miles per minute , 10 minutes, so worse case your solution will give a range about the size of Iowa.

You could increase the ping rate somewhat trivially. Look at what the trucking industry does to keep an eye on cargo. And in any event, the current 777 search area is how big?

Re: MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection, says paper

#117
post #114
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And videos from the ground.

Taken by Russian media. The military have cut off all communication links between the Crimea and the outside world and have been stopping independent journalists from filming.

Really? I saw a Vice (American organisation) video from not too long ago (a week ago or less)...

Re: MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection, says paper

#118
post #76

My guess is that the US, Russian, and Chinese militaries have the interest, and operational ability, to track every in-flight commercial jet all over the world. The IR signature alone makes a commercial jet obvious at any altitude as long as the engines are running. So MH370 is probably not lost; its final position is just being concealed by military protocol to avoid confirming satellite capabilities that have, in a…

Why would the US deploy such satellites to view the southern Indian Ocean? I could understand deployment in potential areas of interest, but that particular area is about as boring as it gets. My point is that even if those capabilities exist, it's not clear that they would be able to help in this particular case.

> Why would the US deploy such satellites to view the southern Indian Ocean? I could understand deployment in potential areas of interest, but that particular area is about as boring as it gets.

China has been venturing in the Indian Ocean, and the United States probably wants to keep an eye on their activities.

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