Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), is plagued by conspiracy theorists. According to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, since the disappearance of MH370, “conspiracy theorists have been busy trying to solve the mystery themselves. Many have contacted Dolan.”
“You’ve got this big mystery and everyone wants to know the answer and everyone wants to help,” the SMH quotes Dolan as saying. “It’s unhelpful, for the sake of the families more than anything else, in the sense that it has the potential to undermine confidence in what we are doing.”
I feel somewhat guilty for being one of those peanut-gallery denizens who have tormented him. Along with my fellow obsessives in the Independent Group, I’ve been straining my brain for the last eight months trying to make sense of the strangest aviation mystery in history. Yes, I’d like to be helpful; yes, I’d like to know the answers. And yes, I may have unwittingly undermined confidence in what the ATSB was doing, for instance by publicly saying that I thought they were looking in the wrong place. (Though, to be fair, they were in fact looking in the wrong place.)
Nevertheless, I must take issue with one aspect of the article’s characterization of my subculture: the use of the term “conspiracy theorist.” Now, look: I get it. My wife says that I remind her of the Kevin Costner character in “JFK.” I ruminate about the intracacies of a famous case and try to piece them together in a new way that makes more sense. I’m obsessed.
There’s a big difference, however, between true grassy-knoll conspiracy theorists (or 9/11Truthers, or the-moon-landing-was-faked believers) and MH370 obsessives like me. It’s this: there is no default, mainstream narrative about the missing Malaysian airliner. There is no story that officials and all reasonable people agree makes sense.
This isn’t the result of laziness or incompetence. It’s just that the data is so strange.
A lot of people don’t get that. Ever since the mystery began, certain voices have been invoking the principle of Occam’s razor, saying that when we try to formulate a most likely scenario for what happened to the plane, we should choose the answer that is simplest. People who are making this argument are usually in favor of the argument that the plane suffered a massive mechanical failure and then flew off into the ocean as a ghost ship, or that the pilot locked his co-pilot out of the cockpit and committed suicide. However, as I’ve argued over the course of several earlier posts, neither theory matches what we know about the flight.
Instead, I’ve argued that an accumulation of evidence suggests that MH370 was commandeered by hijackers who had a very sophisticated understanding of airline procedure, air traffic control, avionics systems, military radar surveillance, and satellite communications. In other words, what happened on the night of March 7/8 of this year was a intentional act. And when it comes to human schemes, Occam’s razor goes out the window. Instead of simplicity, we should expect complexity, not to mention red herrings and any other form of subterfuge.
Whenever I hear Occam’s razor invoked, I inevitably find myself thinking of something that Sarah Bajc said on CNN. Bajc’s partner, Philip Wood, is one of the missing passengers, and she has been very open minded in considering alternative explanations to what happened that night. “There are 40 crazy stories that you could tell about MH370,” she told the anchor. “And one of them is going to turn out to be true.”
I’ve come to think of this as the Bajc Postulate, which I think should replace Occam’s Razor in situations like this. It goes like this: “When trying to unravel human deception, don’t expect simplicity.”
Remember Operation Mincemeat? In 1943, a fisherman found the body of a British officer floating in the sea off the Spanish coast. The authorities turned the corpse over to German intelligence, who discovered that it carried a number of secret documents, including one indicating that the expected Allied assault from North Africa would target Sardinia, not Sicily, as widely expected. The authenticity of the documents was vouched for by every detail of the body, its clothes, and the accompanying possessions, which included several love letters, a photo of a fiancee, a bill from an exclusive tailor, and a theater ticket stub. Either this man and his belongings had all been elaborately and meticulously forged, or he really was who he seemed to be: Occam’s Razor. Hitler himself was utterly convinced. And yet, of course, the whole thing was a ruse, an elaborate deception cooked up with painstaking care by British intelligence. Hitler shifted three divisions to Sardinia, the invasion landed at Sicily, and the war was that much closer to being over.
I think it’s distinctly possible that MH370 represents a deception crafted at the same level of complexity.
In my mind, the crux is what happened at 18:25. Until that moment, the plane had been on radio silence for nearly an hour. After following a zig-zag path along national airspace boundaries, it had reached the limit of military radar coverage and had disappeared. But then, mysteriously, the satcom system reconnected to the Inmarsat satellite overhead. For it to do this, the hijackers would have had to either climbed into the electronics bay or carried out a complex procedure in the cockpit that few people outside of Boeing itself would now how to accomplish. All this, to no evident purpose: no attempt was subsequently used to communicate via the system.
Other things were odd about the 18:25 logon. The frequencies that the system transmitted over the next few minutes were inexplicable to the scientists at Inmarsat. Though the electronics of the system are perfectly understood by the equipment’s manufacturers, they cannot explain how the frequencies were produced. Investigative efforts within the IG suggest that there was another mysterious aspect to the satcom’s behavior post-18:25: when a pair of incoming calls was received at 18:41, the system was unable to pass the calls through. We’re not sure why, but the most likely cause is that errors in the system’s configuration prevented it from aiming the satellite dish correctly.
By 19:41, the satcom system seemed to settle down and transmit at stable frequencies. If taken at face value, these frequencies indicated unambiguously that the plane was flying south. Yet the ATSB has never able to completely make sense of these values. As I wrote last week, it has proven frustratingly difficult to make the two distinct halves of the Inmarsat data—the timing and the frequency data—match up in a way that makes sense.
Regardless of these difficulties, most reasonable people share the conviction that, regardless of what particular track the plane happened to fly, it definitely flew south into the most remote reaches of the southern Indian Ocean. I’ve examined the data myself, and come away convinced that, indeed, the frequency data unequivocally supports this conclusion. But no one knows why anyone would do this. One popular notion is that the hijackers had a destination in mind, but something went wrong, they became incapacitated, and the plane flew on autopilot until it ran out of fuel and crashed. This scenario is certainly possible, but as I recently pointed out, a new speed-analysis technique suggests the plane was under deliberate control until the very end.
So if they weren’t incapacitated, why were these very motivated, very sophisticated hijackers flying a perfectly good jet off into the middle of the ocean? As I see it, there are two possibilities:
- The hijackers were very sophisticated, but for some unknown reason chose to fly the plane off into the middle of the ocean, or
- They were very, very, very sophisticated, and not only survived, but managed to cover their tracks in a way that has fooled absolutely everybody — and turning on the SDU was an essential part of their plan. This explains why there has been no debris found, why there was no radar track over the southern Indian Ocean, and why Inmarsat has been baffled by the BFO values.
This kind of thinking would have been considered outlandish a few months ago, but the more time goes by without any trace of the plane turning up, the more reasonable it is starting to seem. No less an industry eminence than Emirates CEO Tim Clark, whose airline operates the largest 777 fleet in the world, recently told Der Spiegel: “We have not seen a single thing that suggests categorically that this aircraft is where they say it is, apart from this so-called electronic satellite ‘handshake,’ which I question as well.”
To accomplish a disappearing act, the hijackers would have had to have pulled off a plan that the authorities not only couldn’t anticipate beforehand, few could wrap their heads around it afterward. A plan so devious, it would literally be —
What could such a plan have been? Frankly, there’s no way we can be sure. Until the plane is located, and the black boxes are found, all we can do is speculate. But some speculation runs in accordance with the facts, and some runs counter to it. Over the last few months, I’ve pieced together a narrative that I think matches well the facts we do know, explains some otherwise baffling conundrums, and basically ties together a means, a perpetrator, and a destination. (Which, paranthetically, is something that no one else, official or amateur, has yet attempted.)
In the past, I’ve invited others to share their “conspiracy theories,” and I tip my hat to the very, very few (two) who’ve had the courage to take me up on my offer. For the most part, their efforts were met with skepticism, but polite skepticism, and that reaction has emboldened me to press forward with my own big reveal. I hope that some people will find it thought-provoking, perhaps even convincing. I expect that a great many will find it, yes, inconceivable, perhaps even outrageous or even offensive. Remember, it is speculation, not a statement of fact; but if we don’t risk trotting out our speculations eventually then we will never get any closer to figuring out the truth.
If you care to dive down my rabbit hole, click below:
The Spoof, Part 1: Why (A Speculative Scenario)
The Spoof, Part 2: How (A Speculative Scenario)
The Spoof, Part 3: Where (Not a Speculative Scenario)
The Spoof, Part 5: People on the Plane
And that’s all there is for now.
Thanks, Jacques! The next installment is up now.
http://jeffwise.net/the-spoof-part-4-motive/
“Inmarsat swears that it is absolutely certain that they have the right device ID for the terminal. If it turns out they are wrong there are going to be some very very embarrassed people in the UK.”
https://twitter.com/nihonmama/status/450300448591728640
Jeff:
I have always discounted the possibility of someone spoofing the data. It just seemed too far out there, and I thought, too difficult. But the recent uptick in spoofing discussions inspired me to put on my AES engineering hat and ask, how would I do this? It turns out that it is technically less difficult than I thought. I have a block diagram and BOM if you are interested. It would take someone with a very detailed understanding of how the system works, but the actual hardware is less complicated than I thought, requiring no hardware or software modifications to the AES itself. It turns out that simulating any desired BTO value is easier than simulating the BFO values. Moreover, the hardware needed to spoof the GES would not need to be on MH370 or a drone. It could be on the ground anywhere inside the smallest ping ring, which happens to include Iran, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and various islands. I would note that while the hardware is easy, the laptop software required would be fairly complex, but doable. As Victor noted, the perps would need to know the MH370 AES BFO bias a priori for a smooth cutover from the data up to 1707 (real) and the data after 1825 (fake). Not sure how they would get that number. Indeed, even assuming that they would be aware that needed to know that number is a stretch.
Having said all this, I still don’t think the data is the result of spoofing. This was just an intellectual exercise to satisfy my curiosity. It is possible, and possible from the ground, but extremely unlikely.
@jeffwise: Certainly if Russia was the mastermind of this incident, it reduces the strength of the counter-argument regarding the complexity of the hijacking. I hope I am not stealing your thunder by also pointing out the obvious: Russian involvement in MH370 provides the common link with MH17.
But what about all those Chinese citizens onboard? Would Russia risk alienating China when the Russian-Chinese block is so important for countering US hegemony?
Jeff, Bajkonur/Yubileyniy sounds really good. But I am still in doubt that something like this can be kept secret by any SINGLE country and intelligence/news agency. I bet it’s team effort 😉
JeffWise:
Thank you so much for taking the time to think through and lay out your very, very interesting scenario.
I wonder if people who are inclined to dismiss your scenario as mere ‘speculation’ know what an invaluable role scenario creation plays in solving (and anticipating) problems in the real world. And I’m not just talking about for military purposes.
Shell (did much work for them in Japan) is a great example. They maintain a highly regarded, in-house team that does what? Devises scenarios. Why? To anticipate the future (for strategic planning purposes) and to mitigate risks: environmental, financial, (geo)political and technological. Shell’s work in this regard is legendary, and they continue to do some of the most-cutting edge scenario development work on the planet. I’ve often wondered where we’d be in our understanding of MH370’s fate today had there been, back in March, a multi-disciplinary scenario group working in tandem with DS/IG and others who were focused on unpacking and interpreting the data.
Anyway.
I’ve been (quietly) chewing on Kazakhstan as a possible destination for some time. There are interesting reasons for possible motives that have nothing to do with Russia. More later perhaps…
But this —
“Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak personally appealed to Kazakhstan’s president, the Soviet-era strongman Nursultan Nazarbayev, to allow Malaysia to set up a search operation in the country. Kazakhstan never responded. After Inmarsat concluded that the plane had gone south, the matter was dropped.”
— is even more interesting considering that Kazakhstan and Malaysia have a VERY GOOD relationship. In fact, it’s getting even stronger.
http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v7/ge/newsperspectives.php?id=1087001
So we must ask: why would Kazakhstan not respond to Malaysia’s request for a search?
Going further, there’s another major player in that part of the world, and it’s a counter to Russia:
“No secret: China has been apoplectic about how the Malaysians have handled MH370 since day one. And while for investigatory protocol (and facing-saving) reasons it is almost assuredly the case that they would not go over the Malaysian’s heads publicly, do not ever discount what they’d be open to do in the back channel. Remember, the Chinese have built oil and gas pipelines in Central Asia. Moreover, and as controversial as this may be (and it is, if for no other reason than the current and bloody events in Ukraine), there is another player that has historically had strong ties with countries in the northern corridor, but now finds itself in a battle with China for influence there – and that is Russia. Now are these the only two countries that would arguably have an incentive to engage in heavy lifting on behalf of a crowdsourced effort to find a missing airplane? Not at all. But to the degree that those here believe (with increasingly good reason, it appears) that MH370 may have crashed or landed along the northern corridor — and are prepared to explore alternative pathways to determine if that in fact is the case — I’d submit that in one way or another, you would need the quiet assistance of one or both of the aforementioned players to advance on the board…the question now, is cui bono. WHO WOULD BENEFIT by providing assistance to those who believe MH370 is somewhere in the northern corridor?”
Nihonmana
2014/05/07 at 12:17
http://www.duncansteel.com/archives/751#comment-3628
The Circumlocution Office is Alive and Well
China had more people on MH370 than any other country. Why didn’t THEY pressure Kazakhstan for a search?
@SK999: Yes, I read what the ATSB said on page 25, and also page 37. The statement on Page 37 is more interesting, and more aligned with what is stated in the B777 manuals. However, neither statement describes the resulting track explicitly. My question remains – – how does the aircraft follow a magnetic track. Also, the ATSB is not immune from making mistakes. Look at tables 5 and 6 on page 58. The write “Heading” when they mean ‘Track”. They are also masters of obfuscation.
I would be interested to see your magnetic track, and the intercepts with the “ping rings”. Do you have a .kmz file for it, or are you able to plot in in Skyvector ?
@Gysbreght: I understand the switches and selections. But this does not mean that flying a magnetic track is possible. My interpretation of TRK Hold is that the aircraft continues to follow the track at the particular instant that the TRK Hold is selected. Whether the heading is then displayed in Mag or True is incidental. Nothing I have read says that the track followed is that which would apply with a constant magnetic heading and no wind, i.e a curving track as magnetic declination changed. My supplementary question is why would such a track be useful in a practical sense?
@jeffwise
The Xmas Island scenario ties it all together as well (means, perp, destination, lack of debris, lack of radar tracking, motive). It does not require a spoof either.
A general comment/observation after being away for a few days. Being still busy with the boring “xyz-t number crunching” I got clearly out of phase.
Though I have been in the conspiracy corner early on, with my landing scenario’s back in May/June:
It now looks to me that Occam’s Razor is getting rather blunt.
We better not throw it away completely!
I feel a high level of speculation is not really helpful and timely. As the deap sea search is still in an early stage.
@airlandseaman: “Not sure how they would get that number. Indeed, even assuming that they would be aware that needed to know that number is a stretch.”
The speculative trial and error scenario I posted earlier would have the perps create “a perfect model”. One aspect of that model would be the inclusion of the Bias term and recognition of the fact that it must be matched to the particular AES being hijacked for successful spoofing.
In a late stage of planning, after a target plane is selected, a log, or several, for that plane would need to be acquired and run through the “perfect model”. The exact bias value would be determined.
One interesting inference to your other statement of “inside the smallest ping ring” is, that a priori, before any plane and spoof destination is selected a most efficient choice of location for a ground based spoof would be somewhere close to the sub satellite point. That would provide for a maximum number of options of spoof destinations.
P.S.:
Sub satellite 3F1: 0N +/- a bit, 64.5 +/- a bit
Military Installation of a sophisticated power: 7S – a bit, 72E + a bit
I am not subscribing to anything here, but it leaves some interesting possibilities open for discussion.
Cheers
Will
Flitzer_Flyer,
“My supplementary question is why would such a track be useful in a practical sense?”
I’m not a pilot either, but my understanding is that airplanes normally navigate on magnetic headings or tracks, runway direction, VOR radials, ATC instructions all use magnetic reference. In my post I made a point to write SELECTED, I wasn’t considering displays.
Why do you think the B777 Ops Manual Supplementary Procedures, Automatic Flight, AFDS Operation specify that in polar regions the HEADING REFERENCE switch must be changed from NORM (magnetic) to TRUE?
SAPF.4 DSuSpplementary Procedures-Automatic Flight
AFDS Operation
FLIGHT DIRECTOR switches ………………………………………………….ON
Verify FLT DIR is displayed in the AFDS system status annunciator.
If the autopilot is desired:
AUTOPILOT engage switch ……………………………………………….Push
Verify A/P is displayed in the AFDS system status annunciator.
Heading Hold
Maintains the airplane heading the same as the selected heading.
If the airplane is operating in polar regions:
HEADING REFERENCE switch ……………………………………..TRUE
HEADING/TRACK reference switch ……………………………………….Push
@Niels
The lack of debris and the failure to explain Sumatran radar observations (lack of) doom the ATSB and IG scenarios. Time to move on. The moral high ground (pure math plus autopilot) is barren.
A skilfully managed diversion combined with the continued absence of the plane means that something big was transpiring on that night, but I noticed a while back that most of those who were preoccupied with the numbers never wanted to use the term “hijackers.” It was all sterilized into dry technical terms as they set about using their particular talents. The word hijacker has some bad connotations for data quality, and disconcerting as well to keep dwelling on what might have been going on, but that dogleg reboot looks terrible and I never got my head around it. It yells.
Rand – can we revisit the question – could the apparent US indifference to MH370 belie what is really going on? The one that got away? Obama does not want to confront Putin on a normal day? Putin has his own Islamist issues.
@ Gysbreght : Agreed, Magnetic headings are normally used. Almost all documentation [except weather] refers to magnetic reference.
This is verbatim from a current B777 captain – – “Pilots very rarely use TRK Hold or HDG Hold (Engages HDG or TRK when the “Hold” button is pressed – it’s just not a switch we use. We use TRK SEL (what’s in the the HDG/TRK Window). When switching from TRUE to MAG and vice versa in either SEL or Hold modes the wings stay level at that moment. In the HDG/TRK window the number changes to reflect the current mag variation at the moment of the switch.”
Your Supplementary Procedures excerpt refers to Heading. What I am questioning is whether the aircraft will maintain a magnetic TRACK, i.e. following constantly changing magnetic headings, AND compensating for the wind, for any length of time. I’m not convinced that this is a practical A/P mode.
If JeffWise is right re Kazakhstan, it SHOULD have helped with the search for MH370. Why didn’t it?
http://t.co/dbOGK8AuGi
@Matty: “Rand – can we revisit the question – could the apparent US indifference to MH370 belie what is really going on? The one that got away? Obama does not want to confront Putin on a normal day? Putin has his own Islamist issues.”
A few days ago, when reading Jeff’s “-stans story, Baikonur, only means for US to reach space, etc.”, just for a moment, a thought popped into my head, but I discarded it almost as quick as it appeared:
“What if all the East/West stand-off, confrontations (subs near Sweden, Air incursions in British and Norwegian airspaces, Russian ships parked in France’s front yard, MH17 blame game to and fros, tit for tat Sanctions, etc., etc.) are all merely a Big Show put on by the Powers to distract from a close cooperation, behind the scenes, on some other pressing front? Is the disappearance of MH370 part of that hidden story?”
Cheers
Will
Mu/Will:
Very interesting comment.
SOMETHING is going on. And looky here: after Malaysia was inexplicably excluded from the MH17 Joint Investigation team, now it’s on.
http://t.co/0Cox4x2Sss
Since MH17 was their plane, Malaysia should have been on the JIT from day one.
So what shoe dropped?
Here’s another detail that may now be resolved. How does the AES AFC computation work? We know that it assumes that the satellite is precisely over the equator, but does it use a spheroidal or spherical model of the earth? In the October ATSB update, there was this cryptic sentence: “The aircraft velocity vector was corrected for latitude (minor issue only relevant when aircraft was at low latitude).” Huh?
Here’s what I think it means (and I may not have it quite right). Up to now I have programmed the AFC algorithm to use a spherical earth, and in particular the aircraft velocity vector was not computed in a geodetic frame. This approached seemed to give the best agreement with Table 5/6 in the May and Aug versions of the ATSB report. However, in the Ashton et al. Navigation paper, this table changes virtually all the computed Doppler values, even though the inputs haven’t changed. The three values that are relevant are the AFC, the uplink Doppler, and the downlink Doppler. The only way I can now reconcile them all is the modify the AFC algorithm to, indeed, compute the aircraft velocity in a geodetic system. So that is what the ATSB was trying to tell us. Maybe everyone else was doing the right thing all along.
It does makes the BFO mismatch worse than before. Dang.
Mu/Will or whoever you are, this is it.
@sk999, maybe the report involved a bit of dyslexia:
latitude, altitude, near identical spelling, maybe a typo for one?
Going south at low latitude has the velocity vector near orthogonal to the LOS vector => minimal effect of altitude on LOS speed, i.e. doppler.
Going south at high latitude, has the velocity vector more parallel to LOS =>
tiny bit more of an effect.
Cheers,
Will
@JeffWise
Jeff,
In your concluding piece concerning motive have you a reason for suggesting that Nursultan Nazarbayev didn’t respond to Malaysia’s request for a search on their territory?
Nazarbayev & Najib Razak do seem to be buddies: it was reported that Najib’s daughter was engaged to Nazarbayev’s son; Najib was scheduled to present a keynote at the May 2014 Astana Economic Forum (& this was being advertised prior to March); and, it’s been alleged that Najib’s intervention to recover the MH17/9M-MRD DFDR & CVR was facilitated through his relationship with Nazarbayev via Putin & onto the Russian backed separatists in the Donetsk oblast.
:Don
And in other news, the caca just hit the fan.
Call for ATSB chief’s removal over Pel-Air report fiasco
“In what might prove a critical development in the public administration of air safety in this country, that report, released after many delays on 30 August 2012, seems set to be undone, or redone.
As might prove to be the case for Martin Dolan, the discredited ATSB chief commissioner whose testimony before a Senate hearing into the investigator’s botched processes over its Pel-Air findings was rejected by an all party committee.”
http://t.co/wbVHhoU8yN
MuOne – It was definitely noticed here that PM Abbott was by far the most strident of all the leaders in condemning Putin after MH17 and he only represents 24 million people. In other words Vlad seems to be getting a free pass atm and is making hay. I interpreted Obama’s posture as – it’s in the SIO….see ya. Putin is essentially running wild and he knows nothing is going to happen. It’s foregone that he will get Ukraine, the EU will huffily jump up and down and Vlad will say get stuffed. Noone wants to mess with him and he is having a ball. He would probably enjoy pulling an MH370 if he had a desire to. I know he wants Israel gone(Russia always has) and is close to Iran who does also along with the rest of the mideast. It wouldn’t be the first time they have sponsored war there. STAN’S, Vlad, Iran. They kind of go together, just like the nuclear technology that goes back and forth.
Always was of the opinion this site continues to provide a serious platform for people having previously joined Duncan Steel’s forum.
Apparently I was wrong.
So, it’s been the evil Russians…
Why not the NSA making the world believe it was the Russians?
Ah, because they belong to “the West” and hence are the good guys.
Very odd black-and-white journalism.
Remember the discussion (or speculation?) about that Boeing patent?
Triggered furious reactions and any speculation based on it was qualified as totally bizarr and far-fetched (even though Boeing itself was responsible for those speculation).
Honestly I do not see any logical argument that the Russians or the NSA made MH370 disappear.
What about moving one step back, re-evaluating all arguments or simply waiting until MH370 is found and focusing meanwhile one’s capacity on other important things, like Duncan does?
Did they find the plane in the SIO and decide to keep it a secret?
The dog-and-pony is now in full effect:
https://twitter.com/GeorgeHatcher/status/540043738601758720
Gerry – that’s a very odd post. It might come as shock but very few members of the public believe the plane is in the SIO, and a growing number of commentators now doubt it is in the SIO. But opinion is opinion, whoever owns it, and whatever it is. You come out to say essentially – stop having that opinion – on a blog that accommodates a variety of opinion? If you had a plane to point to I’d understand. Your’e like everyone else – you have an opinion, and not much else.
Flitzer_Flyer,
“Your Supplementary Procedures excerpt refers to Heading. What I am questioning is whether the aircraft will maintain a magnetic TRACK, i.e. following constantly changing magnetic headings …”
A little further down the Operations Manual has the same text when discussing TRK Hold and TRK Select.
Other quotes from the manual:
“When operating the autopilot in the polar region in other than LNAV, the
TRUE position on the heading reference switch must be selected.”
“Heading Reference (HDG REF) Switch
Pushing alternately selects the heading reference for the PFDs, NDs, AFDS, and
FMCs.
NORM –
• normally references magnetic north
• automatically references true north when north of 82°N or south of 82°S
latitude or within the vicinity of the magnetic poles (PFDs, NDs, and
FMCs)
• provides no reference for AFDS roll modes other than LNAV when north
of 82°N or south of 82°S latitude or in the vicinity of the magnetic poles.
TRUE – references true north regardless of latitude.”
I don’t think that HDG or TRK modes are ever used for extended periods of time in normal operation. They are used for brief diversions from the flight plan, late changes to arrival/departure procedures close to an airport, etc.
@sk999
>A question came up about which flight path constitutes a “best fit” and whether
>overfitting the data to get zero residuals is OK or bad.
>First, the best fit is always the one that minimizes the rms of the residuals.
>That is the “maximum likelihood” solution.
But not to the point the residuals are zero. If the residuals are zero then the model is defective. The noise cannot be magiced away and a zero residual fit implies there is no noise.
>Second, in general the rms of the residuals will always be less than the formal 1-sigma error.
>If nobs is the number of observations and npar is the number of parameters of the fit, then
>(if I remember this right) rms = 1-sigma * sqrt((nobs-npar)/nobs).
OK. There are only a few data points here, so the rms of the best fit is subject to a deal of potential variability. Normally, npar<Thus, if you have as many free parameters as there are observations, the rms will be 0.
>There is nothing wrong with such a fit.
Yes there is! This is by definition an overfit. If as many parameters are being fit as data points, _any_ data can be fitted and the fit has no weight.
>However, people have not been asking the right question. The right question to ask is
>“what are the 1-sigma errors on the parameters that go into the fit and what are their
>correlations?” The answer to this question does not depend on the quality of the fit at all!
If the quality of the best fit of a particular model is poor it is most unlikely that the model is correct and calculating the 1-sigma errors is that case is meaningless.
Does it make sense to throw a handful of precious real data into a massive random noise generating number-crunching machine called Ornstein-Uhlenbeck, then filtering out the artificial noise by selecting the set of likelyhood-weighted trajectories representing the Bayesian posterior distribution of aircraft flight path, i.e. the 100 “best fits”?
Does anybody know what is the beam width of the High Gain antenna on the plane? Or an approximation?
If feeding spoofed positional data to the SDU, how would the steered antenna still be pointing at the satellite?
Or more interestingly, what data could you spoof to keep the antenna aligned but let the frequency algorithm be fooled?
Wouldn’t it be easier to intercept the data coming OUT of the SDU on it’s way to the antenna (and have the frequency and/or time delay spoofed there)?
Cheers!
Sinux
@Jeff: if I were one of the pax or crew in your scenario, I’d try to text something.
I see you’ve taken pains to weave the (highly dubious) co-pilot cell phone connection into your story. How, then, do you explain the overflying of an entire continent, without so much as a single ping from any of the devices of any of the other 238 people onboard?
What is as real as the sun rising and setting seems to be the most difficult for so many to understand. Satellite/arial photographs taken, included correct global coordinates of them contained the visual demise, survival, signal fire and sinking aircraft in tact facing north all in one collection. This tiled collection was dated March 16 , 2014 4:44 am UTC . Coordinates of the photo tiles on this grid are in the Northern Indian Ocean.
***** {“id”:51020,”overlay_id”:1287,”lat”:4.559736,”lon”:90.601268,”i”:132,”j”:26,”status”:1,”msg”:”Retrieved map ID = 51020″} this is 804 miles west northwest of Kuala Lumpur , Malaysia -(approx 690 nautical mi) on top of the Ninety East Ridge 1800-3600meters deep – this is the only 15mi radius point max the plane will ever be found in. 100% guaranteed since it sank here.
This information has been railroaded, discounted, and as of May 2, 2014 , all links and accurate coordinates of it have been redirected and reassigned with false info.
These facts remain regardless of any corresponding misinterpreted info that followed the initial notification. Knowledge of properly viewing these images was a key factor related to doubt as to the content. Most discoveries on these photographs were limited by an inaccurated on screen scale reference. With no land mass to compare size, people believed the on screen scale graphic. Assumptions were made and reported as planes, parts, debris when infact, many of these findings where sadly passengers floating on debris or the white water from violent shark attacks. Average viewers chose not to view them. This horrible and inconceivable fact was one of several reasons that kept any visible survivors from ultimately being rescued. Very sad indeed.
Having been asked publicly to assist via crowd sourcing, finding all this and then being discounted…RED FLAG!
These photos had been analyzed by an expert as to authenticity and deemed to be un altered in any way.
Meaning that the content is real. The passengers, sadly are all but gone now. The plane however will be right where it can be seen sinking. Intact. Apparently the electronic information may have suffered tampering but these original photographs did not. Several hushed eyewitness accounts from that region support these photographic facts. It is up to you all to figure out how it got there…but it’s still there.
http://www.fromwhereistand.com
The following charts provide some additional insights into the nature of the BFO “noise” and differences in the Bias on BFO observations from different Channel Units and Channel Types.
https://db.tt/gcHDtqMK
The HPBW of the HGA is ~45 degrees (gain = ~13 dB). The HPBW of the LGA is ~160 degrees (gain ~ 3 dB; hemispherically omnidirectional).
HPBW means “Half Power Beam Width”, or 3dB Beam Width.
Hey Brock,
I don’t really believe the Penang cell phone connection, but I threw it in there because it didn’t not fit. We normally wouldn’t expect cell phones to be able to connect from 35,000-41,000 feet up. Also most phones would probably be in airplane mode or off; and if not, and there were a couple of guys on board with nothing to do, they could go through the cabin and check.
@Donald W Elliott: You are frustrated that nobody acts on your information. Others have come to me with image evidence and here is what I tell them to do. Go get one or more satellite imagery experts to corroborate your claims, and then publish their report(s). To have somebody claim that the image was not altered is not sufficient. You need to find an expert (preferably multiple experts) that will vouch that there is a reasonable probability that the images show the remains of an airliner crash at the location and time you cite. No evidence should be accepted in this incident based on the analysis of one individual (in this case, you). When I look at your images, I do not see the objects that you see, although I am not an expert so my opinion is worthless in this domain. Without expert corroboration, your evidence remains highly speculative and will be treated in this way.
@donald elliot
What are you smoking exactly?
No images show passengers eaten by sharks.
Thanks, Jeff. Very relieved to hear we’re on the same page re: Penang.
Having agreed we don’t believe something US officials “confirmed” in March:
A well-known tactic used by all governments wishing to exert control over a narrative is to…
a) anonymously plant a story in a minor news agency, then
b) CONFIRM its veracity when questioned by a major news agency
The minor agency gets the scoop. The major agency gets the access. The government gets the narrative to be whatever they want, whenever they want it. The public gets an independently unearthed, yet authoritatively confirmed piece of solid fact. Everybody wins!
Doesn’t this tactic seem to have been used here by US officials?
If so: why did they use it?
Regarding Jeff’s route to Yubileyniy, Kazakhstan:
The link below describes how easy it would be for expert hijackers add BFO and BTO biases to create an alias route.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/uqj21a6uvt5nmst/MH%20370%2020141203.pdf?dl=0
The required flight path to Yubileyniy is slightly curved to the north (similar shape to what Jeff published in March – April.)
Getting a BTO match is achieved by shaping the flight path.
The hijackers would need to fly this curved path to Yubileyniy. It is possible that this is all that happened. No biasing/aliasing was required.
The hijackers may not have been aware or were concerned that the power-up at ~ 18:22 would enable handshakes and BTO and BFO data.
I really like Jeff’s Yubileyniy location because the average speed of 500 knots and average direction of 310 degrees,
is very close to the 515 knots and 290 degrees at 18:22.
Donald:
I saw some of your images (and website) months ago. Please don’t construe the comments that follow as a personal attack — I know that you’ve spent an enormous amount of time trying to get attention on your images. But you and many of your Tomnod cohorts have gone about this the wrong way. And so your pieces on the chessboard haven’t moved.
“These photos had been analyzed by an expert as to authenticity and deemed to be un altered in any way.”
Which satellite imagery expert analyzed your images and where is that expert’s report? Because merely asserting that your images have been analyzed is not only hearsay, it’s the kind of hearsay that does not meet any evidentiary standard.
99.9% of the Tomnod images that people claim are wreckage from MH370 are not discernible with the human eye.
I’m at a loss to understand why people with Tomnod images that they say unequivocally show wreckage from MH370 have spent EIGHT MONTHS spamming all of Twitter (and elsewhere on the Internet), putting images up on websites and posting videos on YouTube. I’ve even had one person tell me (repeatedly) that I just couldn’t see what they saw because I just needed ‘better equipment’ to view them. Never mind that I was viewing them on a high-end laptop that many people use to make (and edit) movies.
And yet, I’ve not seen one Tomnodder, NOT ONE, take the reasonable and necessary action one would expect they’d take if they actually wanted to PROVE what they claim their images show: and that is to have them professionally analyzed by a satellite imagery expert.
Asserting that an (unnamed) expert analyzed your images without providing a report of their analysis and conclusions is not proof. Asserting that the images show X (even though people can’t see what you see and they tell you that – repeatedly) is an exercise in futility and is not proof. You can’t wage a war (successfully) without a strategy. And getting negative attention is worse than getting none.
The tragedy in all of this is that there may actually be Tomnod images out there that show debris from MH370. But people have confused grandstanding, preening, subjective ‘analysis’, circular conversations and endlessly spamming people with indiscernible images with meticulously building a case (using the images) that withstands objective scrutiny and can get people’s attention. The latter approach is how you effect change.
Perhaps everyone with Tomnod images should just stop and watch Erin Brockovich. They’d learn a lot.
BIG news:
“IHS Maritime has learned a search is also under way some 4,000 kilometres north of the crash site along the Indonesian coast.
The Australian Transport Safety Authority (ATSB) charged with leading the mission to recover the wreckage has told IHS Maritime that long-term drift modelling undertaken in August points to north.
ATSB confirmed that it has contacted its Indonesian counterpart the National Transport Safety Committee (NTSC) and Indonesian search and rescue BadanSarNasional (BASARNAS) is now searching.”
http://t.co/kpwolJEKw4
@airlandseaman, “The following charts provide some additional insights”–Mike, thanks for preparing and sharing this interesting presentation. For the uninitiated, what do they tend to confirm and/or reveal that’s significant?
Alex has posted on Tim’s blog the suggestion that the SDU was not functioning properly because it lost IRS data beginning at 18:25. Does the information in these charts shed any light on whether that’s likely?
Thanks.
@Nihonmama: the “news” isn’t the combing of Indonesians shores – that is to be expected, given search officials’ ongoing insistence that that’s where the drift modeling said to focus a shore search.
To me, the real news is in this paragraph:
‘”Modelling undertaken by Global Environment Modelling Systems on behalf of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority in August, identified the first predicted point of landfall for any floating debris from MH370 was most likely the coast of southern Indonesia about 123 days after the disappearance (in July),” an ATSB spokesperson told IHS Maritime.’
Key word: AUGUST. Back when the “priority search area” ranged from s28 to s32.
I doubt very much that the ATSB’s October 22 “Indonesian directive” – which has been re-iterated by ATSB spokesfolks as recently as last week – was based on an assumed crash-point anywhere NEAR the current best estimate of s38.
This would mean the ATSB is, as we speak, directing two active (and, presumably, expensive) searches – one surface, one deep sea – based on two MUTUALLY INCOMPATIBLE crash locations.
Someone should ask them to explain why the carpet doesn’t match the drapes…
It’s ok that some don’t understand as I explained. I am an expert in my field. That’s one. UAlbany Professor heading up the digital imagery criminal analysis dept , was interviewed in response to my interview. His conclusion was part of the same article in the Albany Times Union. A link was on my site at the time you Questioned these findings. You appear thorough so I assume you have read that and just forgot. They are not my pictures these are photographs that were made available to the world. I simply have the patience and skills to accurately identify the content. Many of your ” Tomnodders” as you call them, sent me numbers and images to view. I was able to identify most if they were original or close. Some were blurry and it was clear that the twitter flood was part of the deception. My ID of these photos and content was sent to officials only on March 19th 2014 and every professional “geo spatial ”
And image analysis experts I could find. Not a single one had even made the effort to return a response. Many of the people that fielded these contact efforts understood the urgency and tried to help only to be told to refer me to someone else. I never stopped trying to save those passengers and that is all on record. I have publicly requested a meeting with any professional image “expert” to view these with me. I am waiting patiently. As you know, my videos on YouTube have been blurred digitally in an effort to discount the visible content. That is impressive deception at its best. None the less. It matters not what you believe or don’t. I only offer identifiable and very sad facts. Those that continue to discount them will ultimately learn that they should not have. I truly appreciate your efforts to weed out the fakes and glory grabbers. Keep that going as it is tiring to see them do this repeatedly. It is truly a miracle that Digital Globe actually photographed all that positively ID’d . Just incredible that they have chosen not to participate other than provide the historic photos.
As I said before, it’s up to the pros to figure out why and how it ended up sinking were it can be seen. All I did was ID it and the content described. No fame…justice.
http://www.fromwhereistand.com
P.S. I only opened a twitter account near midnight Monday 3-24-2014 (reluctantly ) as the message needed to get to anyone and everyone that could help
rescue those survivors. The doubters descended like vultures. I did however find several that could see this content and met with the same resistance.
@Greg Yorke : Are you suggesting that hijackers just took control of the aircraft and flew it to the NE. If so, how did they alias, or spoof the BTO and BFO data to make it appear the aircraft flew south. Especially, how did they know, a priori, the “partial” compensation applied by the GES EAFC system, which is a fundamental element in being able to reconstruct the BFO for a southerly track.
Also, considering the very strong westerly winds across the Bay of Bengal, and India, and further north, which translate into a headwind component of some significance, you need to convince us that an average ground speed of 500 knots is possible.
Alex is our “tenth man”, an Israeli concept that has served to promote critical thinking and avoid dangerous groupthink. There are many other brilliant minds here who challenge and raise new points, which is wonderful. That’s great, but I believe, Jeff, that Alex deserves a seat at the table also. Is there any possible way you’d reconsider and let him return to the discussion? His ideas may or may not be right, the point is that they are unquestionably different.
Brock/Nihonmama – doing drift modeling now won’t really fit March conditions. It suggests that they don’t have a good indication where it will go.
Bruce Lamon:
Before Inmarsat came forward and corrected their bogus March 25th BFO definition, Victor and I both thought the SDU ARINC 429 connection was broken, or the IRS data was no longer available after 18:25. But now that we have the correct BFO definition from Inmarsat, and the May26 logs, it’s clear there was no loss of IRS data or other problems with the ARINC 429 connection. Note that the C6 packets (telephone call attempts) circa 18:40 and 23:14 were 21,000 sps packets. This could only happen using the HGA pointed to the satellite, so more compelling evidence the IRS data was flowing to the SDU after 18:25.
Brock:
“This would mean the ATSB is, as we speak, directing two active (and, presumably, expensive) searches – one surface, one deep sea – based on two MUTUALLY INCOMPATIBLE crash locations.”
And that’s the point. That equals BIG. However people want to characterize it, there are TWO searches going for MH370.
Donald:
“I am an expert in my field.”
Would that be satellite imagery analysis?
“UAlbany Professor heading up the digital imagery criminal analysis dept”
Is this person qualified to render an expert opinion in the field of satellite imagery analysis?
“My ID of these photos and content was sent to officials only on March 19th 2014 and every professional “geo spatial”
And image analysis experts I could find. Not a single one had even made the effort to return a response.”
Your sending images to geo spatial experts is not the same as formally engaging someone (read: paying for their expertise) to properly analyze the images and render a professional opinion. If you had a CAT scan and sent it to 100 physicians, would they all just stop and take the time to analyze your scan merely because you sent it?
“All I did was ID it and the content described.”
You didn’t ID them. You rendered your opinion as to what you believe the images might be. And you may (or may not) be right But if you’re not a qualified expert in the field, that opinion would not be deemed credible from an evidentiary standpoint. In other words, it’s not proof.
“No fame…justice.”
Fame?
People who REALLY fight for justice (and succeed in doing so) don’t talk about fame. They have bigger fish to fry.
And that’s the REAL problem here: the Tomnod’ers who are chasing ‘fame’ but don’t have the goods.
@Flitzer_Flyer
Yes, if they flew on the slightly curved path as indicated – the BTOs would match.
Regarding trying to spoof the BFOs – I don’t
know what they did.
They would have to know how the compensator was actually performing as well as how Inmarsat thought the compensator was performing.
Regarding the 500 knots. I am just trying
to set the constraints for such a flight path. We don’t know if the hijackers
were able to load more fuel.
Also, they could have flown at a lower speed and added BTO ‘biases’. See example path to
Pakistan.