This is happening late at night and will bear further discussion in the morning, but I wanted to get something up online quickly to explain the basic gist of the situation. A little over an hour ago, at 9.30pm EDT here in the US, the Australian government announced that it was abandoning the current search area and moving to a new one 11oo km to the northeast. The reason, they said, is:
The search area for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has been updated after a new credible lead was provided to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA)… The new information is based on continuing analysis of radar data between the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca before radar contact was lost. It indicated that the aircraft was travelling faster than previously estimated, resulting in increased fuel usage and reducing the possible distance the aircraft travelled south into the Indian Ocean.
This explanation really doesn’t make any sense. I want to quickly explain why, and give some context of where all this is happening geographically.
First, here’s a very crude chart I’ve made on Google Earth showing the old search area and the new search area (very roughly estimated). You’ll recall that earlier this week Inmarsat released an analysis of its “ping” data that plotted different routes the aircraft might have taken. The upshot was that if the plane was flying at 450 knots, it would have wound up at a spot on the 8.11am ping arc marked “450.” If it had flown at 400 knots, it would have wound up around the spot marked “400.” (click to enlarge)
As you can see, it appears that the old search area assumed a flying speed of a bit more than 450 knots, and the new search area assumes a flying speed of a bit more than 400 knots, with prevailing currents causing debris to drift to the southeast.
The shifting of the search area to the northeast would seem to stand at odds with the assertion of the press release, which implies that new radar analysis finds the plane was flying faster then originally estimated. In fact, it was flying slower than originally estimated.
At any rate, the abandoning of the old search area, after such significant assets had been lavished upon it, raises the question of why they were so confident about it that speed estimate in the first place. And then raises the obvious sequela: Why are they so confident in this one?
BTW, here’s that graphic from the Inmarsat, showing the 450 and 400 knot plots:
MH370 flight path skirted Indonesia
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J2FxENlbwC0
@Tdm at 03:32
That’s the same link, I posted yesterday 🙂
Glad, that you found it , too, and glad, that you quoted the relevant part.
I think, that’s in connection with your youtube clip extremely interesting.
Will write more about it later…
@Tdm, I was talking about your link to the Reuters article, you posted at 03:32. and your earlier youtube clip, with the Chris McLaughlin interview.
Just to clarify it for new readers…
@ Lee Schlenger –
The announcement of the British sub Tireless getting involved was a big no no and the British PM Cameron would have been made aware of it by his defence chiefs. There is no point building vessels that go underwater and then tell everyone where they are. He would have got a stern talking to but the politics were irresistable for him. It’s just never done, ever, and don’t expect any further mention of HMS Tireless.
On Inmarsat – I think it’s agreed that the ping rings are solid science compared to the doppler modeling. It’s a bit like climate, they do whatever you want them to, there are always biases built in, it’s the assumptions that are the problem, but how would anyone know at the moment. There has been no net earth warming since the late nineties but the “models” keep saying it’s going to warm. Unless you are talking about Naomi Campbell I don’t want to know about modeling.
(Link)Radar services and procedures -department of civil aviation
http://aip.dca.gov.my/aip%20pdf/ENR/ENR%201/ENR%201.6/Enr1_6.pdf.
2.4.4 very telling…then the coverages map .another lie exposed as Malaysian radar covers Indonesia facts don’t lie …cnn get some new reporters!
More on port Blair Andaman island radar.from india.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/malaysianairlinemystery2014/if-missing-jet-made-it-to-andaman-sea-did-indian-radars-fail-to-detect-it/article1-1195576.aspx
Correction- the civil radar system Malaysia has was useless as acars was non operational .sorry for confusing military vs civilian radar .
They sound pretty confident here, almost calling it. But the intermittent signal getting blamed on silt? I’d be nervous.
@Matty
The adding of silt to the official discourse seems a little odd. Being cynical and suspicious I am tempted to wonder if it is some sort of caveat leaving them an out in case these pings end up being false positives.
Meanwhile on the Don Lemon show they have a graphic representation of the search areas where each date is colour coded. Kinda looking like something painted by Jackson Pollock. Inmarsat…So accurate…
@jeffwise – Can Erik van sebille be correct the currents would take any debris west while authorities search east and have been looking in wrong place ?
Eric van sebille is a very qualified person. I could barely believe what he was saying on don lemons show ,for those of you didn’t see this show in His segment he stated there looking for debris in wrong spot according to the currents in the vicinity of search.
http://www.erik.vansebille.com/science/
@ jeffwise you mentioned two options on why they are searching in the wrong direction but did not elaborate ?
@ Littlefoot, apologies for not commending you on your locating the link to Inmarsat’s McLaughlin’s statement. Great stuff.
@Tdm, thanks for the Hindustan Times article. I located the same two weeks or so ago and attempted to get in contact with Saikat Datta, the HT’s defense and intelligence correspondent, to no avail. Air Marshall PK Roy, commander of the Amdaman and Nicobar Islands is the individual who would know for certain whether there was primary radar contact.
My momentary lapse into kooky speculation yielded not only a bit of fun, but likewise an idea. What if Inmarsat is not responsible for developing the Doppler methodology but rather that they directed by a government agency to apply it to their data set?
Despite my speculative nonsense, one can very safely assume that the NSA regularly monitors satellite voice and data traffic and that access to these communications is built into Inmarsat’s $1 billion contract with the DoD (i.e., they aren’t simply selling them sat phone subscriptions). Suppose, then, that the NSA (or another US asset) actually developed the methodology for analyzing the flight paths of commercial aircraft PRIOR to the aircraft going AWOL, and this methodology was in turn supplied to Inmarsat to apply to their data set? If you throw in a few supplemental data points provided by undisclosed intelligence sources, then we have Inmarsat marshalling the math without having developed the methodology, which could explain their arguably nonsensical, “cartoonish” (as Jeff described it) public presentation of their analysis.
A further indication serving my argument that there is a closed loop of information and processes upstream in the search process is that Dr. Larry Stone, the man at science consultancy Metron who located Air France 447 utilizing Bayesian Search Theory, has yet to be called into the search for MH 370. We can assume that Dr. Stone would need access to the complete set of information in the process of applying his subjective search experience and intuition to properly assign probability values to the objective data set to guide the search (this is in fact fundamental to Bayesian search theory). The authorities can’t provide him with the complete data set, and he would thus not prove an effective participant in the search; thus has he yet to be invited to the party.
You can read excellent article on Bayesian methodology contributed to by Dr. Stone, below. I found it interesting how the primary obstacle to locating Air France 447 was the fact that, prior to Metron being involved, the search team had been focusing on CONFIRMED pinger locator data. Dr. Stone reassigned a lower probability to the confirmed pinger data and a higher probability to the batteries having expired and, voila, their computations directed the search to a locale away from the site with confirmed pinger data; they were able to locate the remains of the aircraft within days. This was an example of confirmation bias par excellence. Take another look at the present search: they are now basing their conclusions on the pinger data to the exclusion of other data sets and information.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-statisticians-could-help-find-flight-370/
A radio interview with Dr. Stone can be found here:
http://www.metsci.com/Portals/0/Interviews/Larry_Stone-Flight-MH370.mp3
The practice of any form of science without honoring intuition is known as scientism; I would likewise call it a fundamental error in perspective that needlessly omits a large part of the human experience. My guess is that @Littlefoot’s husband would quite agree.
It’s pretty clear here they think they’ve found the plane. Houston will be going on the advice he’s getting from Ocean Shield which is crewed by civilians and is hosting US navy personnel with the locator as well as other experts. If they are wrong the Chinese will probably want an explanation, and that could be the end of it. Sonar mapping that whole area is not an option, is it? The Australian govt will feel like they have spent enough. They will have years of work.
Wow, @Matty, you just beat just about everyone on this. You might want to tweet the guys at Reuters and have them give you a call. But in all seriousness, please do keep us updated. Boots on the ground, baby.
Houston, we have a plane. Going to be a let down if they don’t!! They believe they are on top of the thing.
“I believe we are searching in the right area but we need to visually identify the aircraft before we can confirm with certainty that this is the final resting place of MH370.”
“Hopefully with lots of transmissions we’ll have a tight, small area and… in a matter of days we’ll be able to find something on the bottom that might confirm that this is the last resting place of MH370,” he said.
“What we have got is a great lead,” he said. “I believe we are searching in the right area but we need to visually identify aircraft wreckage before we can be sure.
“I am optimistic that we will find the aircraft or what is left of the aircraft in the not too distant future, but we have not found it yet.
@Jeff
In reference to the critique that you are developing on the Inmarsat analysis, I defected for a moment and posed the following question to Duncan Steel (I spared him my usual diarrhea):
Have you considered that Inmarsat has relatively clumsily presented their analysis (e.g., the BFO chart) because perhaps they did not in fact develop the methodology? It seems to me that the error in presentation projects initial errors in process, as if it were provided to them and they screwed it up somewhat. I am asking this question in light of the general knowledge that satellite voice and data communications are regularly monitored by US intelligence agencies. Given that these agencies (most likely the NSA and/or the NRO) are amongst Inmarsat’s largest customers, could it be that the flight path tracking methodology was developed within one of these agencies prior to MH 370 going AWOL? The methodology would be a useful tool to have in ones toolbox post 9/11, to say the least, and I can see where Inmarsat serving as the frontman would create a barrier to further inquiries regarding US monitoring of global satellite communications.
Duncan didn’t take the bait, stating that is focused more on what is true and what he knows, and that he is more concerned with the forensics of a cock-up in the math rather than any sort of “conspiracy.” Fair enough, and to be expected from a physical scientist asked to explore more intuitive what ifs.
My reply to Duncan:
While Inmarsat, of course, is not a subsidiary of the US government, it remains their largest customer to the tune of GBP 1 billion per year.
As for conspiracy theories, I am not one for them either, and my interests rather lie in Transformational Grammar and how information is managed and disseminated by government policy/corporate business interests. My point here is that dedicated people such as yourself whom are not internal to these interests are being stymied in their efforts through the provision of relatively garbled information that has been derived from relatively sound data. A cock up it may be, but it could just as likely be a combination of deleted and mistranslated information.
Erm… How do aircraft detect acoustic signals in the ocean?
http://www.jacc.gov.au/media/releases/2014/april/mr016.aspx
@Chris. That’s easy: they go on a fishing expedition for them.
@Rand
Ha ha. *Fly* fishing I assume?
Acoustic bouys perhaps?
@ Chris they utilize a buoy with an acoustic sensor and a transmitter. See Reuters Apr 10.
I am finding it interesting that for all the calculations and refinements being used, that in essence they have searched pretty close to a majority of the southern arc. Starting in an area that is least travelled by commercial shipping traffic that may come across evidence the plane and moving towards areas of increased commercial shipping traffic where there is a greater chance of finding evidence of the plane. Just by guesstimating I would say greater than half and possibly more than two thirds. Thoughts anyone?
@Rand Mayer,
I wouldn’t have expected any other answer from Duncan.That doesn’t mean, we couldn’t be right nonetheless. He’s just not going there with his analysis.
But all natural scientists, I asked, highly doubted, that Inmarsat, at least with the data, they presented the public, could tell the difference between a Northern and a Southern route. Now, think about it: How likely is it, that NO ONE, who was presented with Inmarsat’s data, and had to make the very important decision, whether to go North or South, didn’t notice a mistake. Could be, of course, but highly unlikely.So, my Occam’s Razor (maybe, it’s Littlefoot’s Razor 😉 ) tells me, that Inmarsat had more info and data than they admitted. Given Chris McLaughlin’s Interview, it’s simply a primary radar track. Not very complicated, and hardly a big conspiracy.
The word ‘conspiracy theory’ get’s abused too much anyway these days. Basically it’s simply used to knock at other’s theories without presenting a good argument. History tells us over and over, that there are conspiracies. Every country’s secret service hatches conspiracies on a daily basis. It comes with the job. description. And what exactly is a conspiracy? It’s simply a plan between two or more people, which they attempt to keep secret. For my husband, even pilot suicide is a conspiracy, since he tries to keep his plan secret, but I think, that’s an enormous stretch, and demonstrates simply his unwillingness to deal with people’s thoughts and actions, because he can’t controll them with his scientific mind.
Conspiracies, big and small, just happen, though some theories are highly unlikely.
@Gene, I had the same thought. Their serch covered quite a big area. But for me, that shows, there was no party with privileged knowledge as to where exactly the plane is. At least that conspiracy seems to be highly unlikely. They just knew, or thought, they knew, the plane had to be somewhere along the Southern arc. Though I’d really like to know, how all these ‘refinements’ were done. Maybe, they simply collected more data, like currents, weather, winds and plane speed.
@Littlefoot
I’ve now looked at Duncan Steel’s illustrations for the possible airspeeds and find that the search areas fall right along his estimates.
@Gene, I noticed that, too. Which means, he apparently has reproduced Inmarsat’s calculations… or they’ve read his blog, lol!
Anyway, he never doubted the ping ring calculations.
Something else: There are quite a few new informations. Apparently, the last words were spoken by the captain, and the plane, after it had turned West, disappeared for a stretch of 120 nmiles from Malaysian military radar. Which means, the plane must’ve dipped to an altitude of about 5000/4000 feet either to avoid other planes or to repressurize the cabin. Small wonder then, that they burned more fuel, when crossing the Malaysian peninsula and had less left in the tank for the rest of the journey. One wonders, why it takes so long for these infos to surface.
One thing, I’m greatly puzzled about: Whether it was an emergency or an abduction (maybe by pilot), why did they go even further Northwest to the Andamans, only to turn around almost 180 degrees to the South? It doesn’t make sense in any scenario. If there was an emergency, and everybody was overcome, the Northern route makes more sense, since they were going into that direction anyway. Did someone wake up, turned the plane around, only to get knocked out again??
In the abduction scenario, it makes even less sense: Why would they go Northwest all the way to the Andamans, if they tried to avoid primary radar detection, only to go South in the end?
How credible is that info, they reached the Andamans? Chris Mclaughlin seemed to believe it. And the Reuters reporters were credible sources before. TThey were the ones, who made the scoop about the plane having turned westwards and flown back over the peninsula, when Malaysian authorities were still keeping mum .
Weirder and weirder. Three weeks to learn no it wasn’t “Alright, goodnight,” and maybe that was the co-pilot speaking it. Three weeks to learn it did indeed get down below 5,000 feet. So those Malaysian fishermen-eyewitnesses who were dismissed as ‘mistaken’ three weeks ago are now ‘credible.’
Can someone define for me ‘credible’ as that word relates to this ‘story/event’?
This can’t be explained as ‘Keystone Cops’ anymore folks.
Whatever explanation eventually gets told, I’m now going to find difficult to believe. I pity those poor family, relatives, and friends of the passengers.
I’ve given up, surrendered, not paying attention to this anymore. If it weren’t for the footage of those family members in grief in Beijing, it’s now hard to believe there ever really was such a plane and flight.
@Littlefoot
Keep in mind, the middle of the night is a good time to steal a plane, but a bad time to reach decision makers.
@Littlefoot
I could see Inmarsat making similar calculations to Duncan’s. Seven refinements might be increments of twenty to thirty knots? Maybe he inspired them…
All the new information is interesting, but it is hard to give Malaysian authorities the benefit of the doubt when it comes to disclosure. Jeff made some interesting observations on CNN just a while ago.
In any number of the common scenarios there are inconsistencies that are hard to reconcile for sure. What I have thought interesting at different times is that a lot of different people on some intuitive level are saying something isn’t right. Whether one uses math, an understanding of the technology or just common sense, people keep pointing to something not fitting. I’ll be waiting and hoping to see what it finally turns out to be.
@ Littlefoot
As far as a workable overall scenario is concerned, I have yet to read one that resonates with a reasonable level of plausibility. Whatever happened on the flight must have been a quite exceptionally perfect storm of circumstances to have created a likewise perfect set of seemingly irreconcilable outcomes.
As for Indian radar (nice work locating the McLaughlin video), I think we can safely assume that it reached or flew over or flew near or was detected by Andaman radar are all virtually equal statements. Common radar systems have a range of approximately 200 nautical miles, while IGREX was within this range of installations at both Port Blair and on Car Nicobar. Regardless, what be nice to know from a factual standpoint is whether it was detected and what was the indicated airspeed and direction of travel.
I do feel duped: I simply don’t believe it is necessary for policy considerations to trump the individual and communities in this instance or in others like it. There is no ‘reality’ that one must accept, there are, rather, methods of social organization and control that could be looked upon as primitive, dehumanizing and potentially very dangerous…but perhaps this should be saved for another thread.
@Luigi Warren, you’re right if the pilot was behind this, maybe, he had to hang around for a while for some reason…
@Gene, unfortunately I cannot watch the
@Gene. I was composing while you were posting. My thoughts exactly: the whole thing intuitively doesn’t feel right, there are loose ends in every quadrant of the thing. I keep coming back to the first line of the first email I wrote to a friend that summed up my feelings from day 1: airliners don’t simply just disappear.
@Littlefoot
Jeff brought up fuel burn in relation to performance at those altitudes for that aircraft, but more interestingly he pointed out that cell phones at those altitudes can work. Then pointed out that there are no records of calls by the passengers.
@Gene, sorry, I accidentally hit the post button.
I cannot watch the shows here in Germany,Jeff usually takes part in. I wish, someone would post it on youtube.
I have the feeling, whatever emerges as the truth, if the public is deemed fit to hear it, that is, will be stranger than fiction.
I had my very own ‘Missing Plane Mystery’ the other day right in my living room, with dying batteries and all. It happend with my tiny remote controlled helicopter, which just vanished after a crash. Since the door was closed, it was a classic ‘Locked Room Mystery’, to boot. After three hours searching I thought, the thing was swallowed by a black hole, and had joined MH370 in one of those 11 dimensions, string theorists postulate, to make their theory work.
When I finally sat down, and solved the mystery, it was a very strange chain of events, that had spirited the little helicopter away. I will write it down later for you guys, and give you all the clues, you need, and you can give it a shot, if you like. It has the great advantage, that it can be solved, and that it is lighthearted. 🙂
But it demonstrates perfectly, that sometimes the solution of a mystery is not so simple.
@Gene, thanks for the info. That’s a good point by Jeff, poing to the missing cell phone calls. Of course they’re possible in that low altitude.
That means, either the passengers were unconsious/dead or they hadn’t noticed something was not right. Or someone had collected their phones, or used his authority to forbid any calls, because they might endanger the plane. The captain could do that easily. I think, the second alternative, that nobody noticed, doesn’t seem likely. They may have missed the turnaround, if it was executed smoothly, but can harldy have all slept through such a steep descend, and they would’ve noticed lights on the ground, which would’ve told them, they weren’t crossing water in Vietnames airspace.
Give it up people, get back to your lives, you’re burning up a lot of brain cells and your time. Whatever it was that really happened, we’re not supposed to know. At least not now, maybe never.
Maybe Elvis’ ashes were on the flight and the co-pilot was taking it to some weird prince in Qatar who was willing to pay him 30MM for it, AND at the same time some Islamo-Uighur-sympathizers were going to gain access with a shoe-bomb and had a 9/11 style attack and a date with martyrdom over Beijing, AND the pilot was being paid 30 MM by Inmarsat to ‘disappear’ a plane so they could demonstrate their technical prowess and boost name recognition, and then, somewhere after leaving Malay AT control they all commenced their separate operations and all said “Hey, what the hell are you guys doing, I’ve got my own plot going on here.”
Tomorrow don’t be surprised if we all learn Inmarsat has come forward with a great public mea culpa saying “Gee wiz, we’re really sorry about this folks, we were talking about the wrong satellite all along, the one which was pinging 370 was the one over Guam, not over the Indian Ocean, we’re real sorry, MH370 really went west, but remember, we have said all along this is something we’ve never done before.”
And CNN’s Cooper and Lemon and Quest will get several more nights with their expert panels tossing all that ‘new credible’ info around.
I’ve got some choice land out back for any of you interested. Of course, come Sept and Oct, it’ll be ankle-deep water, lilly pads, and spawning mosquitoes, but it’s clear and build-able now, so don’t delay!
“GWiz
No way dude! The Uyghurs actually got away with commandeering the plane and taking hostages. Tried to make claims and ransom demands. When China, other nations and the venerable Peter Bergen of CNN and literary fame scoffed at the notion that they could get away with something of this magnitude the Uyghurs shrugged their shoulders. Said “eff it”. Disposed of or stranded the passengers and crew. Grabbed a six pack of Tsingtao and tried coming up with a better plan.
@Littlefoot
I look forward to your mystery.
As I posted in a earlier comment there is a protocol if a Malaysian airliner has lost all radio communication(1). There is also a protocal if your landing gear is not operational (2.pg41) a grass landing is your # 1 option.so after I read these two protocols cocos keeling appears as a great option if facing a catastrophe .cocos has a beautiful runway ( no airtraffic) with large grass aprons running the entire runway apron(google earth) .wanted to mention this as the media just doesn’t get it there’s protocols to keep in mind such as avoiding traveled Airspace when all communications fail,hello !time will tell. if I was in a pinch that’s exactly where I would try to go .
(1) http://aip.dca.gov.my/aip%20pdf/ENR/ENR%201/ENR%201.6/Enr1_6.pdf
(2) http://www.deltava.org/library/B777%20Manual.pdf
@Gene, you shall have it:
Location:
Living room, furnished with sofa, rocking chairs, coffee table and bookshelfs, in a prewar building in the North of Germany, 20 square meters, 3,50 m high. Windows and doors closed at the time of the helicopter’s disappearence.
Living souls in the room:
Myself, our German Spitz dog Charly, our Burmese cats Dylan and Füsschen.
Victim:
A tiny rc helicopter (‘Nano Falcon’)
What happened?
The little heli, which is hardly bigger than a firefly, is a bit tricky to steer, but one eventually gets the hang of it. The battery lasts about 5 minutes. When it’s almost empty, the heli become highly erratic. I flew it for about 4 1/2 minutes to the great amusements of my pets, who tried to catch it. Eventually, it crashed in front of the coffee table. The cats got a little frightend and went into hiding under the sofa, while the dog softly pounced on it, and wanted to sniff it out. I ordered the dog away from the heli. He obeyed, stepped away…and, then, just like that, the heli was gone. I couldn’t see it anymore.I assumed, the dog must’ve pushed it under the table somehow, which was a bit strange, because he stepped away, before he touched it. I started the heli with the remote control. I heard it alright, and the sound still came from where I had seen it last, but I still couldn’t locate it. I started the rotors again. It was apparently still there, but the sound was a bit muffled now, as if it was under a pillow, settee, bookshelf with dust or something like that. I tried the rotors a third time, but got no reaction anymore. The heli’s battery was empty. It always dies very suddenly. I looked under the table and under the shelfs, but couldn’t find it. It had vanished in plain site. I looked under the sofa,where the cats were still hiding out, but they didn’t have it. I looked under all pillows without success. By now I was really baffled. I threw all pets out,so they couldn’t interfer with a more rigorous search, got a broom and a pocket light and started to search systematically. But I found nothing but dust, which had been undisturbed for quite a while. I started to clean the room, I turned the coffee table upside down, I removed the books from the shelfs, disconnected the tv, and even contemplated to rip open the wooden pedestal in front of the windows (10 square meters, 0,3 m high), on which the sofa, the coffee table and a rocking chair is placed. I had searched for two hours, the room was cleaner than ever before, but the heli was still gone. The cats were looking at my actions om the outside through the glass door. The dog had fallen asleep in his basket.
I got myself a cup of wine, placed myself in a rocking chair and tried to think hard, how I could avoid to rip open the pedestal. I started to contemplate the possibility of nano black holes, which had swallowed the Nano Falcon. Steven Hawking postulated their existence, but had assured the world, that they disintegrate as quickly as they pop up, and they’re supposed to be quite harmless. Maybe Steven Hawking is wrong. By then, the wine kicked in, and I suddenly knew, what had happened. Can you guess?
And no,just to eliminate that solution, neither the dog nor the cats had eaten it or harmed it in any way.
If you want to take a look at the heli flying, search Youtube for ‘Nano Falcon’; there are a few nice clips.
And get a sixpack or a glass of wine 😉
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/still-a-long-way-to-go-in-search-for-flight-mh370-says-hishammuddin-bernama
“He said that only after it was confirmed that the signals were actually from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, would the operation shift into the next phase.
Noting that “it is still a long journey to go”, he said: “We get updated all the time from JACC (Australia’s Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre), but it’ll take a couple of days to look at the signals from the ping locator.” http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/still-a-long-way-to-go-in-search-for-flight-mh370-says-hishammuddin-bernama
Australia has all ready analyzed the ping recordings. I am getting the sense Malaysia isn’t to keen on finding mh 370 ..
5 weeks later, with everything that’s been invested would you go to the trouble of doing a few dummy runs with a 777 to see what the doppler data really looks like? If they did it was hushed up.
@Littlefoot
You know it’s funny I was wondering before you posted if you had a pet that could of gotten a hold of it. I also wondered if you had a bookshelf that it could have gotten behind. Or behind the books on the bookshelf. But now I have read your story and the trouble is I can’t settle on just one possibility without knowing what the proximity of animals and objects were to each other. So….
1) When the dog pounced the helicopter got caught up in it’s fur. Turn it on and gets further caught up. Again and the battery is dead or so caught up that it can’t make noise. This requires the dog to be fairly calm when there is something buzzing in it’s fur.
2) The helicopter was pushed under the table and when started climbs and the rotors get caught in a seam or maybe caught in a cavity. Started again it is muffled because it is the helicopter and not it’s rotors turning or because it is in a cavity. Is there a drawer in the coffee table?
3) Somehow gets under the couch and similar to the table theory gets hung up on the underside of the couch.
That’s all I got…Mmmmmmm beer…
The lack of flotsam has authorities baffled.
“It is painstaking work to scour a massive area but we are perplexed about the lack of wreckage,” a source said.
“We expect to find some debris such as the wing (fuel) tanks that are air tight and would float.”
Wreckage has become passe’. All about signals now except some of these signals are 25 kms apart.
@ Littlefoot
Good one. The heli became tangled in your dog’s hair.
@Matty
It’s hard to imagine how the two items with pingers that are located in the tail of the aircraft can drift that far apart from each other. Or if they are together and all the detections are accurate, how the dynamics sound in water could extend the range of the pingers that much.
@Littlefoot, or anyone who can answer:
I’m a bit confused about the significance of the Chris from Inmarset interviewed by Megyn Kelly. Is it the adamant “It flew over the Andaman Islands” that’s significant? i. e. The Indians really did see MH 370 on radar? (I thought the “official” report was they had no radar info on the flight.)
And would this be considered a “slip” or divulged unintentionally, or was it public knowledge when he said it?
Also how do they know if MH370 flew around Indonesia? Because it wasn’t spotted going >over Indonesia on radar?
Sorry if this has been covered somewhere. I think I have read everything here, and also on Duncan’s blog.
Thanks in advance for any info/insight you can share. (I’m not a scientist, but like to think I have common sense, and a healthy dose of skepticism.)
@ Gene –
Throw in the Chinese signals. There is an exclusion zone around the Ocean Shield to avoid electronic confusion, so the Orion goes miles the other way, drops a sonar buoy in the water and voila! A signal. But if doppler is any good why not try and replicate it? How many aircraft hours have gone into this now.
@Matty
I can’t see any harm in doing a test as you propose, but I can see the people involved directly figuring they don’t need to. They are pushing those crews pretty hard and hopefully they are switching them out on a regular rotation.